s   \sw 


OF    CALIFORNIA 


LIBRARY    OF   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF    CALIFORNIA 


Of   CHIFORHU 


LIBRARY   OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


OF   CALIFORNIA          LIBRARY    OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


L-y         H*> 


NIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


LIBRARY   OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


1 


/~A^O 

NIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


LIBRARY    OF   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


3 


HWfcH 

"a 


j*/ 

siJSE^/ 


LIBRARY  OF  THE  UMIVERSITY  OF  CUIFORMIA 
v     V^yf7 


THE    UNITED    STATES 

An  Experiment  in  Democracy 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

An  Experiment  in  Democracy 


By 

CARL  BECKER 

Professor  of  Modern  European  History 
in  Cornell  University 


Harper  &  Brothers    Publishers 
New    York    and    London 


U.  S.  AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 


Copyright.  1920,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  August,  1920 

o-u 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

In  the  preparation  of  this  work 
I  have  been  greatly  aided  by 
my  former  colleague  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota,  Professor 
Guy  Stanton  Ford,  whose  excel- 
lent judgment  and  cordial  assist- 
ance are  an  unfailing  resource  for 
for  all  who  have  the  good  fortune 
to  be  associated  with  him. 
CARL  BECKER 

Ithaca,  New  York 
March,  /5,  1920 


424530 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  AMERICA  AND  DEMOCRACY I 

II.  THE  ORIGINS  OF  DEMOCRACY  IN  AMERICA      .  5 

III.  THE  NEW  WORLD  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY  20 

IV.  DEMOCRACY  AND  GOVERNMENT 64 

V.  NEW  WORLD  DEMOCRACY  AND  OLD  WORLD  IN- 

TERVENTION         108 

VI.  DEMOCRACY  AND  FREE  LAND 142 

VII.  DEMOCRACY  AND  SLAVERY 186 

VIJI.    DEMOCRACY  AND  IMMIGRATION 225 

IX.  DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION 262 

X.  DEMOCRACY  AND  EQUALITY 296 


THE   UNITED    STATES 

An  Experiment  in  Democracy 


THE  UNITED   STATES 

An  Experiment  in  Democracy 


AMERICA   AND    DEMOCRACY 

EVERY  country  is  important  in  its  own  eyes 
and  for  its  own  people;  but  some  coun- 
tries have  a  wider  significance,  a  significance 
for  the  world  at  large  which  gives  them  a  pe- 
culiar place  in  the  history  of  civilization. 
England,  for  example,  has  come  to  stand  for 
what  is  roughly  called  political  liberty^  and, 
being  pre-eminently  the  'founder  of  colonies, 
she  is  sometimes  called  the  "mother  of  na- 
tions." France  has  never  been  only  France, 
but  always  something  European — the  source 
and  the  exemplar  of  fruitful  ideas.  The 
United  States  has  likewise  had  its  meaning  for 
the  Occidental  world ;  in  its  own  eyes  and  in 
the  eyes  of  Europe  it  has  stood  for  the  idea  of 
democracy.  "Conceived  in  liberty  and""3edF 
cated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

created  equal,"  its  history  has  had  the  sig- 
nificance of  a  great  social  experiment. 

Americans  themselves  have  commonly  taken ! 
democracy  for  granted,  but  for  a  century  in- 
telligent Europeans  were  aware  that  popular 
government  and  social  equality  on  such  a 
grand  scale  were  new  things  in  the  world. 
The  outcome  they  could  not  regard  as  a  fore- 
gone conclusion,  but  they  knew  that  the  phe- 
nomenon was  well  worth  careful  attention, 
since  it  was  bound,  for  good  or  for  evil,  to  have 
a  profound  influence  upon  the  trend  of  his- 
tory in  Europe.  In  the  course  of  a  hundred 
years  many  Europeans  have  come  to  observe- 
us  at  first  hand;  and  from  Crevecoeur  to 
H.  G.  Wells  the  thing  that  has  chiefly  in- 
terested them  has  been  the  character  and  the 
relative  success  or  failure  of  our  political  and 
social  institutions.  They  have  endeavored  to 
estimate,  for  the  instruction  of  European 
readers,  the  form  and  pressure  of  our  democ- 
racy, in  order  that  it  might  serve  as  an  example 
or  a  warning  to  the  Old  World. 

With  the  exception  of  Lord  Bryce,  the  most 
intelligent  European  who  ever  set  himself  the 
task  of  observing  America  at  first  hand  was 
Alexis  de  Tocqueville.  De  Tocqueville  was 
no  apostle  of  democracy,  but  he  convinced 
himself  that  it  was  bound  to  come,  accepted 
it  as  one  accepts  the  inevitable,  and  like  a  wise 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

man  wished  to  be  prepared  for  it.  It  was  in 
order  to  be  prepared  for  it  that  he  came  to 
America,  where  he  thought  it  could  be  ob- 
served in  its  most  perfect  manifestation  and 
to  the  best  advantage. 

It  is  not  [he  says]  merely  to  satisfy  a  legitimate 
curiosity  that  I  have  examined  America;  my  wish 
has  been  to  find  instruction  by  which  we  may  ourselves 
profit.  Whoever  should  imagine  that  I  have  intended 
to  write  a  panegyric  would  be  strangely  mistaken,  and 
in  reading  this  book  he  will  perceive  that  such  has 
not  been  my  design:  nor  has  it  been  my  object  to  advo- 
cate any  form  of  government  in  particular,  for  I  am  of 
opinion  that  absolute  excellence  is  rarely  to  be  found 
in  any  legislation;  I  have  not  even  affected  to  discuss 
whether  the  social  revolution,  which  I  believe  to  be 
irresistible,  is  advantageous  or  prejudicial  to  mankind. 
I  have  acknowledged  this  revolution  as  a  fact  already 
accomplished  or  on  the  eve  of  its  accomplishment, 
and  I  have  selected  the  nation,  from  those  that  have 
undergone  it,  in  which  its  development  has  been  the 
most  peaceful  and  the  most  complete,  in  order  to  dis- 
cern its  natural  consequences,  and,  if  it  be  possible, 
to  distinguish  the  means  by  which  it  may  be  rendered 
profitable.  I  confess  that  in  America  I  saw  more  than 
America;  /  sought  the  image  of  democracy  itself,  witk 
its  inclinations,  its  character,  its  prejudices,  and  its  pas-\ 
sions,  in  order  to  learn  what  we  have  to  fear  or  to  hope  } 
from  its  progress. 


statement  of  De  Tocqueville  might  be 
taken  as  representing  the  attitude  of  Europe 
,  toward  America  during  the  first  century  of  her 

3 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

history  as  an  independent  nation,  intelligent 
Europeans  have  seen  in  America  more  than 
America;  they  have  seen  in  it  the  image  of 
democracy  itself.  Whether  this  image  has 
seemed  to  them  pleasing  or  menacing,  they 
have  realized  that  it  might  teach  them  much 
of  what  they  had  to  fear  or  to  hope  for  in  the 
future.  In  its  origin  and  in  its  history  the 
United  States  stands  for  democracy  or  it 
stands  for  nothing.  What  is  the  character  of 
this  democracy?  What  were  the  conditions  of 
its  origin  ?  Upon  what  solid  or  fragile  founda- 
tions does  it  rest?  What  is  essential  in  order, 
that  it  may  endure  ? 


II 

THE   ORIGINS   OF   DEMOCRACY  IN  AMERICA 

MANY  sorts  of  people  contributed  to  the 
settlement  of  the  thirteen  English  col- 
onies which  declared  their  independence  of 
Great  Britain  on  July  4,  1776.  Men  of  all 
classes,  from  the  noble  to  the  jailbird,  were 
among  the  first  English  immigrants  in  the 
seventeenth  century;  but  for  the  most  part 
the  settlers  were  neither  the  outcasts  nor 
the  favorites  of  fortune,  but  the  moderately 
well-to-do — lawyers,  doctors,  merchants,  shop- 
keepers, small  landowners,  and  peasants.  The 
motives  which  inspired  these  people  to  try 
their  fortunes  in  America  varied  with  the  in- 
dividual, as  well  as  with  the  region  in  which 
they  settled.  Some  came  in  a  spirit  of  advent- 
ure, others  to  mend  their  fortunes  or  escape 
the  consequences  of  crime  or  poverty.  Certain 
colonies,  such  as  Virginia,  were  founded 
chiefly  by  men  who  sought  better  economic 
opportunities;  while  others,  such  as  Massa- 
chusetts, were  founded  by  men  whose  main 

5 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

aim  was  to  erect  in  the  New  World  that  ideal 
commonwealth  which  they  despaired  of  ever 
seeing  in  Europe.  However  varied  and  inter- 
mingled these  motives  may  have  been,  they 
may  all  be  included  in  one  motive,  which  was 
the  desire  for  more  freedom  and  a  better  op- 
portunity. Speaking  generally,  therefore,  it 
may  be  said  that  the  founding  of  the  English 
colonies,  which  afterward  became  the  United 
States  of  America,  was  an  idealistic  enterprise 
— the  work  of  discontented  men  who  sought 
in  the  New  World  a  freedom  which  was  denied 
to  them  in  the  Old. 

In  the  New  World  they  found  much  freedom, 
of  a  certain  kind.  They  found  freedom  from 
tradition,  and  from  the  legal  and  conventional 
restraints  of  civilized  society.  In  America  they 
found  no  pope  and  no  king,  no  noble  lords 
levying  toll  upon  the  land,  no  Church  exacting 
fees  from  the  poor  as  the  price  of  salvation. 
In  America  men  found  all  the  freedom  of 
Nature.  Yet  Nature  imposes  her  own  con- 
straints. In  this  wilderness  to  which  they 
came  the  early  settlers  found  that  liberty  was 
the  reward  of  those  who  seek  out  and  obey 
the  harsh  and  unproclaimed  laws  of  the  phys- 
ical universe.  For  many  years  the  only  liberty 
which  they  had  was  the  liberty  to  exist,  if, 
perchance,  they  could  manage  to  do  so.  Thou- 
sands perished,  but  the  hardy  survived;  the 

6 


AN  EXPERIMENT  INO  DEMOCRACY 


hardy  and  the  adaptable,  the  resourceful,  the 
inventive,  the  stubbornly  persistent,  those 
with  a  certain  iron  hardness  in  their  nature, 
those  with  the  indomitable  will  to  conquer— 
these  survived  and  won  the  freedom  of  the 
New  World. 

While  the  New  World  of  America  was  no 
lotos-land  to  be  enjoyed  without  effort,  the 
difficulties  to  be  overcome  were  different  in 
the  North  and  in  the  South.  There  was  every 
variation  in  physical  environment  from  the 
meager  soil  and  bitter  winters  of  New  England 
to  the  rich  bottom-lands  and  almost  tropical 
heat  and  miasmic  atmosphere  of  South  Caro- 
lina. Besides  the  difference  in  soil  and  climate 
the  various  colonies  were  settled  by  a  some- 
what different  class  of  people,  and  in  some 
cases  by  people  who  came  for  quite  different 
purposes.  It  is  therefore  in  part  due  to  phys- 
ical reasons  and  in  part  due  to  moral  reasons 
that  certain  characteristic  differences  came  to 
distinguish  the  institutions  and  customs  of  the 
New  England,  the  Middle,  and  the  Southern 
colonies. 

The  people  who  came  to  Virginia  were 
mostly  well  content  to  establish  there  the  in- 
stitutions of  old  England,  to  reproduce  its 
class  divisions,  to  perpetuate  its  social  cus- 
toms. But  it  was  found  that  the  most  profit- 
able thing  to  raise  in  Virginia  was  tobacco; 
2  7 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  in  spite  of  every  effort  to  prevent  it,  to- 
bacco became  the  one  important  staple  crop 
of  the  colony.  Thus  it  happened,  contrary  to 
expectation,  that  Virginia  was  settled,  not  in 
compact  towns  on  the  English  model,  but  in 
great  and  widely  separated  farms  or  planta- 
tions, strung  along  the  river-banks  where  the 
rich  bottom-lands  were.  The  plantation  was 
managed  by  the  owner  or  "planter,"  and 
worked  at  first  by  "servants" — men  who  had 
sold  their  services  for  a  term  of  years  in  order 
to  pay  the  cost  of  their  transportation  to 
America — and  afterward  by  negro  slaves. 
Towns  did  not  grow  up  in  Virginia,  because 
the  plantation  was  a  kind  of  economically  self- 
supporting  community  in  itself,  and  because 
the  tobacco  could  be  most  easily  shipped  di- 
rectly from  the  planter's  own  docks  on  the 
river-front.  Thus  there  were  in  Virginia  only 
two  classes,  the  planters  and  their  subject 
servants  and  slaves.  Virginia  was  in  fact  a 
landowning  aristocracy,  without  nobility  or 
merchant  class,  or  any  considerable  small 
peasant  farming  class;  and  the  other  Southern 
colonies,  except  North  Carolina,  were  on  the 
whole  similar  to  Virginia  in  these  respects. 

The  New  England  colonies  differed  widely 
from  Virginia,  both  in  the  motives  which  led  to 
their  settlement  and  in  the  economic  charac- 
teristics of  the  communities  which  were  in  fact 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

established  there.  Massachusetts,  the  princi- 
pal New  England  colony,  was  settled  by  Eng- 
lishmen who  were  not  content  to  re-establish 
in  America  the  institutions  that  existed  in 
England.  These  Puritans — so  called  because 
they  wished  to  "purify"  the  English  Church 
from  "popish  practices" —came  to  America 
primarily  to  establish  a  society  which  should 
be  at  once  State  and  Church — a  "due  form  of 
government,  as  well  civil  as  ecclesiastical";  an 
ideal  or  Bible  commonv/ealth  which  should  be 
pleasing  in  the  sight  of  God  and  conformable 
to  His  law.  In  Massachusetts,  and  this  was 
true  of  New  England  as  a  whole,  the  unit  of 
settlement  was  thus  the  town  and  the  parish, 
two  things  intimately  related;  and  this  type 
of  settlement  was  suited  not  only  to  the  ideal 
purposes  of  the  settlers,  but  also  to  the  eco- 
nomic conditions  which  made  Massachusetts 
a  small  farming  country  given  up  largely  to 
the  raising  of  grain  and  live  stock.  Every 
New  England  colony,  therefore,  was  at  first 
a  collection  of  little  agricultural  villages  or 
townships,  where  the  people  built  their  houses 
around  the  church,  which  was  the  center  of 
community  life,  and  where  they  distributed 
their  land  and  managed  their  affairs  in  little 
democratic  assemblies  of  freeholders  known  as 
the  town  meeting. 

Between  the  New  England  and  the  Southern 
9 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

colonies  lay  the  Middle  colonies  of  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  and  Delaware. 
They  were  in  origin  the  least  English  of  the 
Colonies.  New  York  was  originally  settled  by 
the  Dutch,  from  whom  it  was  conquered  by 
England  in  1664.  Pennsylvania,  although 
founded  by  the  Englishman,  William  Penn, 
was  from  the  beginning  a  refuge  for  the  op- 
pressed of  continental  Europe  as  well  as  for 
the  English  Quakers  who  followed  Penn  to 
the  New  World.  More  composite  in  their 
population,  the  Middle  colonies  united  in  some 
measure  the  characteristics  of  the  New  Eng- 
land and  the  Southern  colonies;  in  respect  to 
their  origin,  the  religious  motive  was  more 
prominent  than  in  the  South,  but  less  so  than 
in  New  England;  the  small  farm  was  the 
characteristic  economic  feature,  but  the  large 
estate  was  common  in  New  York;  the  unit  of 
local  government  was  neither  the  town,  as  in 
New  England,  nor  the  county,  as  in  the  South, 
but  a  combination  of  town  and  county. 

By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
population  of  the  Colonies  had  reached  a  mill- 
ion and  a  half,  and  their  increase  in  wealth  was 
even  more  marked.  The  early  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  a  golden  age  in  agriculture  and  com- 
merce, and  in  this  prosperity  the  Colonies 
shared.  In  nearly  every  colony  there  came  to 
be  a  small  group  of  landowning  and  commer- 

10 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

cial  families  of  considerable  wealth,  closely 
interrelated  by  marriage,  and  forming  a  little 
colonial  aristocracy  which  largely  controlled 
the  government  and  legislation  of  the  colony. 
Rather  sharply  separated  from  this  aristocracy 
of  "best  families"  was  the  class  of  the  "hum- 
ble folk" — the  small  farmers,  the  artisans  and 
mechanics  in  the  towns,  and  the  servant  and 
slave  population — who  had  but  little  political 
or  social  influence.  In  every  colony  there  was 
an  assembly  of  representatives  chosen  for  the 
most  part  by  the  property-owners,  and  largely 
dominated  by  the  coterie  of  wealthy  families. 
Aside  from  the  legislative  assemblies,  which 
passed  laws  mainly  in  the  interest  of  the  classes 
that  controlled  them,  there  was  in  each  colony 
a  governor,  and  in  most  colonies  an  executive 
council  which  was  also  usually  an  upper  legis- 
lative chamber;  but  the  governors  in  every 
colony,  except  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island, 
and  in  most  cases  the  executive  council  also, 
were  appointed  by  the  British  government 
and  were  supposed  to  represent  the  interests 
of  the  British  Empire  just  as  the  assemblies 
were  supposed  to  represent  the  interests  of 
their  particular  colonies. 

The  interests  of  the  British  Empire  chiefly 
centered  in  the  trade  laws,  those  regulations 
which  required  the  Colonies  to  export  certain 
staple  products,  such  as  sugar,  tobacco,  indigo, 

ii 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  naval  supplies,  to  Great  Britain  or  to  a 
British  colony,  and  which  likewise  required 
the  Colonies  to  import  most  of  the  manufact- 
ured commodities  which  they  needed  from 
Great  Britain.  The  trade  laws  were  not,  for  the 
most  part,  very  serious  burdens,  for  the  British 
merchant  could  not  profit  by  the  ruin  of  the 
colonial  trader,  and  in  the  long  run  regula- 
tions prejudicial  to  either  were  not  very  rigidly 
enforced.  The  burden  of  the  trade  laws  fell 
chiefly  upon  the  poor  in  England  and  in  the 
Colonies,  since  the  mercantile  system  was  de- 
signed not  so  much  for  the  advantage  of  Eng- 
land at  the  expense  of  the  Colonies,  but  rather 
for  the  special  advantage  of  the  upper  classes 
in  both  countries,  the  merchants  and  land- 
owners in  England  and  the  Colonies  alike. 

Under  these  circumstances,  the  ruling  classes 
— landowners,  merchants,  and  moneyed  men 
— in  the  Colonies  as  well  as  in  England,  were 
greatly  interested  in  the  defense  and  the  ex- 
tension of  the  Empire.  In  pursuit  of  this  ob- 
ject England  fought  a  number  of  wars  in 
Europe  during  the  eighteenth  century,  mainly 
against  France;  and,  inasmuch  as  the  English 
colonies  in  America  were  in  close  contact  with 
the  French  settlements  to  the  north  and  west, 
every  war  between  England  and  France  in 
Europe  was  necessarily  a  war  between  the 
English  and  French  colonies  in  America.  What 

12 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

is  known  in  American  history  as  King  Will- 
iam's War  was  but  the  American  counterpart 
of  the  war  of  the  League  of  Augsburg  (1685- 
97) ;  Queen  Anne's  War  was  the  counter- 
part of  the  War  of  the  Spanish  Succession 
(1701-13);  King  George's  War  was  the  coun- 
terpart of  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Suc- 
cession (1740-48);  and  the  French  and  Ind- 
ian War  was  the  counterpart  of  the  Seven 
Years'  War  (1756-63).  In  America  all  of 
these  wars  were  in  fact  "French  and  Indian" 
wars;  in  all  of  them  the  colonists  were  ex- 
pected to  defend  themselves  against  the 
French  and  against  their  numerous  Indian 
allies,  on  land,  while  the  British  government 
furnished  them  protection  on  the  sea.  Every 
colonial  war  was  a  considerable  expense  to 
the  Colonies;  but  it  was  maintained  that 
the  defense  and  extension  of  the  Empire  was 
an  advantage  to  the  Colonies  no  less  than  to 
Great  Britain. 

Of  all  the  colonial  wars  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  most  important  was  the  last 
one,  the  French  and  Indian  War  (1754-63), 
which  was  the  American  counterpart  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War  in  Europe.  In  fact,  the 
war  broke  out  in  America  before  it  did  in 
Europe,  and  the  immediate  cause  of  the  war 
was  the  dispute  between  the  French  and  Eng- 
lish in  respect  to  their  relative  rights  to  the 

13 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

territory  west  of  the  Alleghanies.  The  Eng- 
lish had  always  claimed  this  territory  as  the 
legitimate  extension  of  the  lands  which  they 
occupied  on  the  seacoast;  the  French  claimed 
it  by  the  right  of  discovery  and  occupation. 
The  most  direct  entrance  to  the  rich  lands  west 
of  the  Alleghanies  was  by  way  of  the  upper 
Ohio  River,  and  it  was  the  attempt  of  the 
French  and  English  to  fortify  and  hold  the 
upper  Ohio  at  the  place  where  the  present 
city  of  Pittsburg  stands  that  precipitated  the 
French  and  Indian  War.  After  a  long  and 
difficult  struggle,  the  English  won,  both  in 
Europe  and  in  America.  By  the  Treaty  of  Paris 
of  1763  the  French  were  practically  expelled 
from  North  America,  and  England  acquired 
all  of  her  possessions  east  of  the  Mississippi. 

The  year  1763,  which  marks  the  close  of 
this  seven  years'  conflict,  was  an  important 
date  in  the  history  of  the  world.  In  Europe 
the  war  had  taken  the  form  of  an  attempt  to 
destroy  the  rising  power  of  Frederick  the 
Great.  That  object  was  not  attained,  and  the 
chief  results  of  the  war  were,  therefore,  two: 
it  assured  the  ultimate  ascendancy  of  Prussia 
over  Austria  in  Germany,  and  it  assured  the 
maritime  and  commercial  ascendancy  of  Eng- 
land over  France  in  India  and  America.  Yet 
the  Treaty  of  Paris,  which  seemed  to  open 
the  way  for  a  great  extension  of  the  British 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Empire  in  North  America,  was  in  fact  the 
prelude  to  the  loss  of  its  chief  possessions  there ; 
for  with  1763  we  may  date  the  beginning  of 
that  long  conflict  between  the  Colonies  and 
the  mother  country  of  which  the  outcome  was 
the  establishment  of  the  United  States  as  an 
independent  nation. 

The  war  itself  laid  the  foundation  for  this 
conflict.  During  the  war  the  Colonies  levied 
and  equipped  about  twenty-five  thousand 
troops,  and  these  troops,  although  they  could 
not  alone  have  driven  the  French  out  of  Mon- 
treal and  Quebec,  gave  essential  assistance  in 
achieving  that  end.  The  Colonies  had  good 
reason,  therefore,  to  feel  that  they  had  done 
their  full  part  in  expelling  the  French  from 
North  America;  and  they  were  much  in- 
clined to  think  that  for  the  future,  especially 
as  the  danger  from  France  was  now  once  for 
all  removed,  they  could  easily  defend  them- 
selves without  any  British  aid  at  all.  The 
general  effect  of  the  French  and  Indian  War 
upon  the  Colonies  was  one  of  emancipation- 
it  gave  them  a  sense  of  power  and  indepen- 
dence such  as  they  had  never  known  before. 

This  feeling  of  emancipation  was  due  not 
only  to  the  fact  that  the  Colonies  had  aided 
in  winning  the  war,  but  also  to  the  fact  that 
for  the  first  time  they  had  acted  together  for 
a  common  end.  The  Colonies  had  always 

15 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

been  noted  for  the  spirit  of  jealousy  and  sus- 
picion which  characterized  their  dealings  with 
one  another.  Puritan  New  England  had  looked 
askance  at  her  neighbors  because  of  their  re- 
ligious beliefs  and  practices,  while  the  Vir- 
ginia and  South  Carolina  planters,  and  the 
wealthy  merchants  of  New  York,  who  copied 
the  manners  and  the  dress  of  the  English 
"gentleman,"  made  sport  of  the  grave  man- 
ners and  precise  speech  of  the  solemn  New- 
Englanders.  In  1760  Benjamin  Franklin 
wrote  that  no  one  need  fear  that  the  Colonies 
would  "unite  against  their  own  nation,  which 
protects  them  and  encourages  them,  with 
which  they  have  so  many  ties  of  blood,  in- 
terest, and  affection,  and  which  'tis  well  known 
they  all  love  much  more  than  they  love  one  an- 
other" Intercolonial  jealousy  and  suspicion 
— the  spirit  of  provincialism  or  particularism- 
was  indeed  still  very  strong  after  the  war,  and 
for  many  generations  it  was  to  play  a  great 
part  in  the  history  of  the  United  States ;  but 
although  the  French  and  Indian  War  did  little 
or  nothing  to  bring  about  a  formal  union  of 
the  Colonies,  it  led  them  to  realize  that  they 
could  unite  if  they  wished  to  do  so,  and  that 
they  had,  after  all,  much  in  common,  which 
ought  to  make  them  wish  to  do  so.  The  men 
from  Massachusetts  and  Pennsylvania  and 
Virginia,  who  had  been  brought  together  and 

16 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

who  had  fought  side  by  side  with  the  British 
regulars  during  the  war,  came  to  realize  as 
never  before  that  these  Englishmen  were  some- 
how different  from  the  colonials,  and  that  a 
Massachusetts  man  was,  after  all,  much  more 
like  a  Virginian  than  either  was  like  the  Eng- 
lishman. The  French  and  Indian  War,  in 
fact,  greatly  strengthened  the  sense  of  inter- 
colonial solidarity.  Men  began  to  think  of 
themselves  as  in  some  sense  Americans  and 
not  simply  as  Virginians  or  Massachusetts 
men;  they  thought  of  themselves  as  British- 
Americans,  and  to  think  of  themselves  so  was 
to  be  aware  that  there  was  something  more 
fundamental  than  mere  geographical  location 
which  separated  Americans  from  British.  In  a 
vague  and  intangible  way  the  conception  of  an 
American  nation  was  beginning  to  take  form. 
The  feeling  of  intercolonial  solidarity  was 
strengthened  by  the  rapid  growth  of  the  Col- 
onies in  wealth  and  population.  Some  years 
before,  Franklin  had  pointed  out  the  fact 
that  the  population  of  the  Colonies  doubled 
every  twenty  years,  and  on  account  of  the 
immense  stretches  of  free  land  it  would  con- 
tinue to  do  so  for  an  indefinite  future.  On  the 
other  hand,  no  European  country  had  ever 
attained  such  a  rate  of  increase,  and  during 
the  last  hundred  years  the  population  of 
England  had  not  doubled  once.  From  these 

17 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

facts  it  seemed  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
within  the  next  hundred  years  the  center  of 
wealth  and  population  of  the  British  Empire 
would  be  in  America  rather  than  in  Europe. 
Furthermore,  on  account  of  this  increase  in 
population,  the  Colonies  were  every  year  be- 
coming more  important  to  England  as  markets 
for  her  manufactured  goods.  Thus  at  the 
moment  when  the  Colonies  were  beginning  to 
feel  strong  enough  to  get  along  without  the  pro- 
tection of  Great  Britain,  they  were  also  com- 
ing to  feel  in  some  measure  that  Great  Britain 
could  not  very  well  get  along  without  them. 

Not  only  did  the  French  and  Indian  War 
change  the  attitude  of  the  Colonies  toward 
Great  Britain,  it  also  changed  the  attitude  of 
Great  Britain  toward  the  Colonies.  For  seven 
years  Great  Britain  had  been  fighting  not  only 
in  America,  but  in  Europe  and  in  India  and 
on  the  sea — in  the  "four  parts  of  the  world," 
as  Voltaire  said.  Within  seven  years,  as  a 
result  of  these  wars  for  the  defense  and  ex- 
tension of  the  Empire,  the  public  debt  had 
doubled.  Much  of  this  debt  had  been  con- 
tracted for  maintaining  the  English  fleet  and 
army  in  America,  and  Englishmen  were  in- 
clined to  overlook  the  assistance  rendered  by 
the  Colonies  and  to  take  to  themselves  the 
credit  for  the  expulsion  of  the  French  from 
Canada — without  the  British  troops,  they 

18 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

were  inclined  to  think,  the  colonists  would 
have  found  themselves  subjugated  to  the 
Bourbon  despotism.  It  seemed  only  right, 
therefore,  that  the  Colonies  should  contribute 
something  to  the  defense  of  the  Empire  in 
return  for  the  protection  which  had  been  ex- 
tended to  them.  On  account  of  the  great 
expansion  of  the  British  possessions  in  Amer- 
ica, the  British  government  felt  that  it  was 
necessary  to  retain  a  part  of  the  British  army 
in  the  Colonies  as  a  check  against  the  Indians 
and  in  order  to  assure  an  effective  control 
of  Canada,  and  it  was  generally  thought  in 
England  that  the  Colonies  could  not  reason- 
ably object  to  paying  some  tax  or  contribu- 
tion in  partial  support  of  this  army  which 
was  to  be  stationed  among  them  for  their  own 
protection. 

Thus,  in  1763,  the  very  time  when  the 
Colonies  were  acquiring  a  new  sense  of 
strength  and  independence,  the  British  gov- 
ernment was  preparing  to  adopt  measures  for 
the  closer  integration  of  the  Empire  and  for 
imposing  upon  the  Colonies  some  part  of  the 
burden  of  imperial  defense.  The  attempt  of 
the  government,  in  1764-65,  to  lay  taxes  for 
this  purpose  was  the  beginning  of  ten  years 
of  controversy  and  strife  which  led  finally  to 
the  American  Revolution  and  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  Thirteen  Colonies. 

19 


Ill 

THE   NEW  WORLD   EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

I 

IN  1760,  three  years  before  the  Peace  of 
Paris  was  signed,  George  III  became  King 
of  England.  This  was  an  event  of  great  im- 
portance in  the  history  of  England  and  of  the 
United  States,  on  account  of  two  political 
objects  which  the  new  king  pursued  with 
stubborn  persistence  during  the  first  twenty 
years  of  his  reign.  In  the  first  place,  George 
III  was  always  in  favor  of  the  policy  of  taxing 
the  Colonies  and  of  subjecting  them  to  the 
authority  of  the  British  Parliament.  In  the 
second  place,  he  was  determined  to  make  the 
Ministers  carry  out  the  policy  of  the  king 
rather  than  a  policy  imposed  upon  the  king 
by  the  Parliament.  The  twofold  aim  of 
George  III  was  to  establish  the  supremacy  of 
the  Parliament  over  the  Colonies,  and  to  es- 
tablish the  supremacy  of  the  king  over  the 
Parliament;  and  these  two  vital  questions, 

20 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

the  question  of  colonial  rights  and  the  ques- 
tion of  parliamentary  government  in  England, 
were  bound  up  one  with  the  other,  inasmuch 
as  the  success  of  the  king  in  achieving  the  one 
aim  was  likely  to  result  in  his  achieving  the 
other  aim  also. 

This  does  not  mean,  as  is  often  supposed, 
that  all  those  who  opposed  the  king's  scheme 
of  breaking  away  from  the  control  of  Parlia- 
ment also  opposed  the  taxation  of  the  Col- 
onies. In  1765  nearly  every  one  in  England 
who  thought  about  the  matter  thought  it 
only  right  that  the  Colonies  should  pay  taxes 
in  their  own  defense,  and  very  few  regarded 
it  as  unjust  or  illegal  for  Parliament  to  levy 
those  taxes.  The  famous  Stamp  Tax  was 
passed  in  1765,  after  a  year's  notice,  with 
scarcely  any  opposition  either  in  Parliament 
or  out  of  it.  Indeed  there  was  but  little  in- 
terest in  the  matter,  because  no  one  supposed 
that  there  would  be  any  serious  objection. 
Edmund  Burke  said  that  he  never  listened  to 
a  more  languid  debate;  and  Horace  Walpole, 
who  afterward  became  a  rabid  supporter  of 
the  Colonies,  mentions  the  passage  of  the 
Stamp  Act  as  one  might  mention  any  unim- 
portant act  of  legislative  routine.  At  the  time 
no  one  realized  that  this  act  would  lead  to 
controversy,  to  strife,  and  finally  to  revolu- 
tion and  the  disruption  of  the  Empire. 

21 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Such  complete  misunderstanding  of  the  im- 
portance of  the  Stamp  Act  was  due  to  the 
significant  fact  that  whereas  nearly  every  one 
in  I^^jtWi 'thought  the  law  a  just  and  reason- 
able one,  nearly  every  one  in  America  thought 
it  an  unjust  and  an  unreasonable  one.  What 
was  the  caus£of  this  remarkable  difference  in 
the  point  of  view  of  the  two  groups  of  English- 
speaking  peoples  ?  The  explanation  has  some- 
times been  that  the  colonial  leaders  used  this 
opportunity  to  carry  out  a  malign  and  delib- 
erately conceived  conspiracy  to  precipitate  a 
rebellion  in  order  to  win  political  indepen- 
dence. But  there  is  slight  evidence  in  support 
of  this  idea.  In  1765  practically  all  Americans 
were  proud  of  being  British- Americans,  they 
gloried  in  the  greatness  of  little  old  England, 
and  they  looked  forward  with  pride  to  the 
great  role  which  the  British  Empire  would 
play  in  the  future  history  of  the  world.  Very 
few  colonists  at  that  time  dreamed  of  inde- 
pendence, or  thought  it  possible  for  the  Col- 
onies to  be  happy  or  prosperous  except  as 
parts  of  the  Empire.  In  the  desire  to  preserve 
and  to  strengthen  this  Empire,  both  English- 
men and  Americans  were  agreed;  but  they 
differed  radically  in  their  ideas  of  how  the 
Empire  ought  to  be  organized  and  governed, 
and  it  is  this  difference  which  explains  why 
the  former  thought  the  Stamp  Act  just  and 

22 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

reasonable,  while  the  latter  thought  it  unjust 
and  unreasonable. 

In  the  eighteenth  century 
ment,  and  to  a  large  extent 
in  political  matters,  was  controlled  by  a  faly 
small  and  a  fairly  selfish  landowning  and  c(£m- 
mercial  oligarchy;  and  the  con^Kicence  And 
egoism  of  this  oligarchy  were  never  greater 
than  just  after  the  Seven  Years'  War,  when 
all  the  world  was  fearing  or  admiring  the  tre- 
mendous success  of  Great  Britain.  Naturally 
enough,  therefore,  the  average  Englishman 
felt  that  this  Empire,  about  which  the  great 
Pitt  had  talked  so  much,  was  the  result  of 
the  virtues  and  the  sacrifices  of  England,  and 
that  as  it  had  been  created  so  it  must  neces- 
sarily be  held  together  by  the  force  of  British 
arms  and  of  British  laws.  Apart  from  such 
control,  the  average  Englishman  was  apt  to 
say,  India  and  the  American  Colonies  would 
have  been  subjected  to  the  despotism  of  the 
French  kings;  and  what  could  be  more  rea- 
sonable, therefore,  than  to  suppose  that  the 
defense  and  the  development  of  the  Empire 
must  be  undertaken  by  the  only  supreme 
power  there  was — namely,  the  British  Parlia- 
ment. If  every  part  of  the  Empire  should  be 
allowed  to  do  as  it  liked,  there  wouldn't  be 
any  Empire  very  long,  and  nothing  but  a  self- 
ish desire  to  escape  their  fair  share  of  the 
3  23 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

burden  of  defense  could  lead  the  Americans 
to  object  to  so  reasonable  and  moderate  a 
tax  as  the  Stamp  Tax. 

The  American  colonists  regarded  the  Em- 
pire in  a  somewhat  different  light.  They  knew 
very  well,  what  the  Englishman  was  likely  to 
forget,  that  in  the  seventeenth  century  the 
Colonies  had  been  established  without  much 
aid  from  England,  in  some  cases  by  people 
who  had  been  driven  out  of  England  in  order 
to  escape  religious  or  political  oppression; 
and  they  were  aware  that  if  the  English 
government  had  neglected  the  Colonies  in  the 
seventeenth  century  and  had  allowed  them  to 
do  very  much  as  they  liked,  it  was  because  they 
were  not  regarded  as  of  great  importance. 
The  Americans  felt  also  that  the  new  interest 
in  the  Colonies  which  the  English  government 
was  now  exhibiting  was  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  trade  of  the  Colonies  was  becoming  su- 
premely important  to  the  commercial  and 
landowning  aristocracy  of  England.  As  for 
the  conquest  of  Canada,  they  felt  that  they 
had  done  even  more  than  their  share,  a  fact 
which  the  British  government  itself  recognized 
by  repaying  to  them  a  part  of  the  money  which 
they  had  raised  during  the  war.  In  a  word,  the 
Americans  felt  that  whatever  importance  the 
American  Colonies  had  as  parts  of  the  Em- 
pire, whatever  economic  or  military  or  polit- 

24 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ical  value  they  possessed,  was  due  to  the  labor 
and  the  sacrifices  of  the  colonists  themselves, 
who  therefore  deserved  quite  as  much  credit 
for  building  up  the  wonderful  British  Empire 
as  the  people  of  England. 

The  fundamental  notion  of  Americans  was 
admirably  expressed  by  Benjamin  Franklin 
in  I7SS: 

British  subjects,  by  removing  to  America,  cultivating 
a  wilderness,  extending  the  domain,  and  increasing 
the  wealth,  commerce,  and  power  of  the  mother  coun- 
try, at  the  hazard  of  their  lives  and  fortunes,  ought  not, 
and  in  fact  do  not  thereby  lose  their  native  rights. 

By  their  native  rights,  Americans  meant  the 
traditional  right  of  Englishmen  to  govern  and 
tax  themselves  in  assemblies  of  their  own 
choosing.  Englishmen  had  such  an  assembly 
in  Parliament,  but  the  Colonies  were  not,  and 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  could  not  well  be 
represented  in  Parliament;  but  they  had  now, 
and  had  always  had,  their  own  assemblies  by 
which  they  had  hitherto  governed  and  taxed 
themselves.  These  assemblies  they  wished  at 
all  hazards  to  keep.  It  was  through  these 
assemblies  that  they  had  raised  the  money 
to  support  the  Empire  in  the  last  war  against 
France,  and  they  were  quite  willing  in  the 
future  to  raise  their  fair  share  of  taxes  for 
the  support  of  the  Empire;  but  they  wished 

25 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

to  raise  these  taxes  through  their  own  as- 
semblies in  their  own  way.  If  the  Parliament 
could  levy  and  collect  a  Stamp  Tax,  it  could 
levy  and  collect  any  and  all  taxes,  and  it 
could  regulate  the  powers  of  the  colonial  as- 
semblies or  abolish  them  altogether.  The 
right  of  Parliament  to  tax  the  Colonies  in  fact 
involved  the  right  to  abolish  colonial  self- 
government;  and  fundamentally,  therefore, 
the  Colonies  were  contending  for  the  right  of 
self-government. 

In  defense  of  this  right  the  colonists  re- 
sisted the  Stamp  Tax.  All  classes  refused  to 
use  the  stamped  papers;  in  many  cases  the 
stamps  were  destroyed  by  mobs;  and  the 
merchants  bound  themselves  not  to  import 
commodities  from  England  until  the  act 
should  be  repealed.  Partly  on  account  of 
opposition  in  the  Colonies,  partly  on  account 
of  the  pressure  from  the  English  merchants, 
who  complained  that  their  business  was  being 
ruined,  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed  in  1766. 
But  the  next  year,  after  a  change  of  Ministry, 
certain  duties  known  as  the  Townshend  duties 
were  laid  on  the  importation  of  tea,  glass, 
painters'  colors,  and  paper.  The  colonists 
had  claimed  that  the  Stamp  Tax  was  uncon- 
stitutional because  it  was  an  "internal"  tax; 
but  now  they  abandoned  the  distinction  be- 
tween internal  and  external  taxes  and  objected 

26 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

to  the  levying  of  any  taxes  whatever,  including 
import  duties  intended  to  raise  a  revenue. 
After  three  years  of  controversy  and  strife, 
of  rioting  and  of  restrictive  non-importation 
agreements,  the  British  government  again 
yielded  and  repealed  all  of  the  duties  save  the 
threepenny  duty  on  tea,  which  was  main- 
tained, not  for  the  revenue  which  it  would 
bring  in,  but  as  an  assertion  of  the  right  of 
Parliament  to  levy  taxes  on  the  Colonies. 

Although  the  Colonies  insisted  that  the 
duty  on  tea  was  unconstitutional,  the  con- 
troversy largely  subsided  during  the  years  from 
1770  to  1773.  In  the  latter  year,  however,  the 
old  dispute  was  revived  by  a  resolution  of 
Parliament  giving  to  the  East  India  Company 
a  practical  monopoly  of  the  importation  of 
tea  into  the  Colonies.  Taking  advantage  of 
this  opportunity  to  gain  control  of  a  very 
profitable  colonial  business,  the  company  sent 
over  four  cargoes  of  tea  billed  to  the  four  ports 
of  Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and 
Charleston.  The  Boston  shipment  arrived 
first,  in  the  fall  of  1773,  but  when  it  was  at- 
tempted to  land  the  tea,  a  crowd  of  men  dis- 
guised as  Indians  boarded  the  ship  and  threw 
the  tea  into  the  harbor.  In  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  the  tea  was  sent  back  to  England, 
and  at  Charleston  it  was  stored  in  the  base- 
ment of  the  custom-house.  In  reply  to  these 

27 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

acts,  particularly  to  the  destruction  of  the 
tea  at  Boston,  the  British  government  de- 
cided to  make  a  final  test  of  the  authority 
of  Parliament.  By  overwhelming  majorities 
the  Parliament  passed  what  were  known  as 
the  Coercive  acts,  one  of  which  suspended  the 
Massachusetts  government  and  placed  the 
colony  practically  under  military  rule,  while 
another  closed  the  port  of  Boston  until  the 
town  should  make  compensation  to  the  East 
India  Company  for  the  loss  of  its  property. 
As  the  king  said,  "The  die  is  now  cast;  the 
colonists  must  either  submit  or  win  complete 
independence."  This  was  true,  and,  now  that 
the  issue  was  so  clearly  one  of  legislative  in- 
dependence and  not  merely  one  of  taxation, 
the  colonists  gradually  changed  their  argu- 
ment once  more,  and  from  this  time  on  were 
inclined  to  deny  not  merely  the  right  of  Par- 
liament to  tax  the  Colonies,  but  the  right  of 
Parliament  to  legislate  for  them  at  all. 

It  was  on  this  theory  that  the  war  was 
waged.  According  to  this  theory,  as  the 
colonists  finally  elaborated  it,  the  Empire  was 
a  federation  of  states  rather  than  a  unitary 
state;  and  just  as  England  and  Ireland  and 
Hanover  each  had  its  own  government,  so 
the  American  Colonies  must  have  their  own 
governments,  all  of  these  separate  countries 
and  governments  being  united  under  the  king 

28 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

without  being  subject  to  the  Parliament.  The 
English  Parliament,  according  to  this  theory, 
would  be  primarily  the  legislature  for  Eng- 
land and  Scotland;  but  on  account  of  its 
central  and  imperial  position  it  would  also 
exercise  a  directing  and  supervising  control 
of  matters  of  purely  imperial  concern,  such 
as  international  relations  and  general  com- 
mercial regulations;  but  it  would  have  no 
control  whatever  over  the  local  legislative 
concerns  of  the  Colonies  any  more  than  over 
the  local  concerns  of  Hanover.  The  famous 
Declaration  of  Independence  was  constructed 
on  this  theory.  It  does  not  mention  Parlia- 
ment; the  charges  of  tyranny  and  oppressu  u 
are  all  directed  against  the  king,  on  the 
ground  that  the  Colonies  could  declare  their 
independence  of  the  king  only,  since  the  king 
was  the  only  authority  to  which  they  had  ever 
been  legally  subject. 

The  battle  of  Yorktown  made  it  clear  to 
all,  even  to  the  stubborn  king  himself,  that 
the  attempt  to  subject  the  Colonies  to  par- 
liamentary control  must  be  abandoned.  But 
in  abandoning  this  object  the  king  had  also 
to  forgo  the  attempt  to  establish  royal  su- 
premacy over  Parliament.  In  a  very  real 
sense  the  victory  at  Yorktown  in  1781  not 
only  established  the  independence  of  the 
United  States,  but  contributed  to  the  triumph 

29 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  the  principle  of  parliamentary  government 
in  England  as  well. 

From  his  accession,  in  1760,  to  the  end  of 
the  Revolution  George  III  steadily  labored 
to  undermine  the  principle  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  Ministers  to  Parliament.  His  ideal 
of  government  was  not  far  different  from  that 
of  the  rulers  of  modern  Germany:  it  was  the 
king's  duty  to  rule  his  people,  to  rule  them 
wisely  and  well  in  a  paternal  spirit ;  it  was  the 
duty  of  the  people  to  submit  dutifully  to  this 
paternal  wisdom;  as  for  the  Parliament,  that 
was  a  body  of  representative  men  whose  busi- 
ness it  was  to  give  advice  to  their  master  so 
that  he  might  indeed  rule  wisely,  but  never 
to  force  its  advice  upon  him.  George  III 
would  therefore  have  Ministers  of  his  own 
choice  who  were  entirely  responsible  to  him 
and  not  to  the  Parliament;  he  would  have 
Ministers  who,  because  they  were  chosen  by 
him  from  all  parties,  would  be  subject  to  no 
party  and  would  be  able,  therefore,  to  give 
him  disinterested  advice.  P'or  twenty  years 
the  king  worked  steadily  to  realize  this  type 
of  benevolent  despotism  in  England. 

It  is  not  likely  that  the  king  could  in  any 
case  have  succeeded.  Nevertheless,  his  object 
was  not  an  impossible  one.  At  that  time  the 
principle  of  ministerial  responsibility  to  Par- 
liament was  by  no  means  firmly  established 

30 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in  English  political  practice,  and  the  condi- 
tions of  English  politics  were  so  undemocratic 
and  in  many  respects  so  corrupt  that  there 
was  something  to  be  said  in  favor  of  the  king's 
contention.  The  English  Parliament  in  the 
eighteenth  century  was  a  representative  body, 
but  it  was  not  a  democratic  body.  It  really 
represented  those  great  landowners  and  mer- 
chant princes  who  were  able,  through  their 
wealth  and  social  influence  and  by  virtue  of 
a  peculiarly  inequitable  system  of  elections, 
to  control  in  large  measure  the  return  of  mem- 
bers to  Parliament.  The  political  leaders  who 
looked  out  for  the  interests  of  these  classes 
were  divided  into  a  number  of  groups  or  "fac- 
tions." They  all  called  themselves  "Whigs" 
because  the  term  "Tory"  had  fallen  into  dis- 
repute since  1714,  when  Lord  Bolingbroke 
and  other  Tories  had  opposed  the  accession 
of  the  Hanoverian  dynasty  and  had  intrigued 
to  bring  back  instead  the  exiled  Stuarts. 
From  1714  to  1760,  therefore,  the  government 
of  England  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Whigs; 
and  at  the  time  of  the  accession  of  George  III, 
in  1760,  the  various  Whig  factions — the  Bed- 
ford Whigs  and  Pelham  Whigs  and  Grenville 
Whigs — had  come  to  think  of  government  as 
a  kind  of  vested  right  to  be  enjoyed  by  them 
forever.  And  in  particular  they  had  come  to 
think  of  the  king's  Ministers  as  men  who 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

must  be  the  responsible  leaders  of  Parliament, 
as  men  who  must  adopt  policies  which  could 
be  carried  through  Parliament. 

Now  George  III  was  not  willing  to  submit 
to  ministerial,  that  is  to  say,  to  parliamentary, 
control.  George  III  was  the  first  of  the  House 
of  Hanover  who  could  speak  the  English 
language  as  his  native  tongue,  and  he  was  the 
first  to  be  more  interested  in  his  English  pos- 
sessions than  in  his  Hanoverian  possessions. 
"Born  and  bred  an  Englishman,"  he  said,  "I 
glory  in  the  name  of  Briton."  He  not  only 
gloried  in  the  name  of  Briton,  he  gloried  also 
in  the  name  of  king;  and  from  the  first  day 
of  his  reign  he  was  determined  to  be  a  real 
king,  to  formulate  his  own  policies,  and  to 
destroy  the  controlling  power  of  the  great 
Whig  families.  It  must  be  confessed  that 
there  is  not  much  to  be  said  for  the  Whig 
factions,  or,  with  exceptions,  for  their  leaders. 
Such  men  as  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  the  Duke 
of  Bedford,  George  Grenville,  or  Charles 
Townshend  were  more  intent  upon  advancing 
their  own  political  interests,  or  in  circumvent- 
ing the  intrigues  of  a  rival  faction,  than  they 
were  in  advancing  the  interests  of  the  nation 
or  defending  or  promoting  the  cause  of  free 
government.  The  famous  William  Pitt,  a 
great  liberal  and  a  friend  of  the  right  of  the 
Colonies  to  tax  themselves,  was  nevertheless 

32 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

as  hostile  to  the  Whig  factions  as  the  king 
himself,  and  as  willing  to  see  them  destroyed. 
But  the  king  aimed  to  do  more  than  to  destroy 
the  Whig  factions;  he  aimed  to  make  the 
king  independent  of  Parliament — to  restore 
the  powers  and  prerogatives  which  the  kings 
had  enjoyed  before  the  Revolution  of  1688. 
Thus  it  happened  that  in  resisting  the  king, 
and  in  trying  to  force  their  Ministers  upon 
him,  the  corrupt  Whig  factions,  whatever  the 
motive  may  have  been  which  inspired  their 
action,  were  really  fighting  for  the  principle 
of  representative  government  against  the  prin- 
ciple of  royal  supremacy. 

This  conflict  between  the  king  and  the  Whig 
factions  went  on  during  the  first  twenty  years 
of  the  new  reign;  and  as  time  passed  it  became 
clear  that  the  question  of  parliamentary  as 
against  royal  control  in  the  English  govern- 
ment was  bound  up  with  the  question  of  the 
success  or  failure  of  the  Colonies  in  their  strug- 
gle for  self-government.  The  number  of  men 
who  supported  the  Colonies  was  not  great, 
although  they  were  often  men  of  the  greatest 
ability,  such  as  Pitt  and  Burke  and  Fox;  and 
when  the  Colonies  declared  their  indepen- 
dence many  men  in  England  who  had  formerly 
supported  them  now  rallied  to  the  support 
of  the  government's  policy.  Pitt  himself  was 
one  of  these;  and  in  fact  it  was  the  revolt  of 

33 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  Colonies  which  temporarily  rallied  the 
great  majority  of  Englishmen  to  the  support 
of  the  king  and  enabled  him  to  build  up  a 
"King's  Party"  in  Parliament  that  steadily 
carried  the  policies  of  his  Minister,  Lord 
North,  who  in  turn  took  his  instructions  from 
the  king.  During  the  American  war,  which 
was  the  period  of  the  Ministry  of  the  sub- 
servient Lord  North,  the  king  was  thus  able 
to  attain  his  object  of  subjecting  the  Parlia- 
ment to  the  royal  will.  But  it  was  precisely 
because  the  revolt  of  the  Colonies  had  thrown 
all  power  into  the  hands  of  the  king  that  the 
maintenance  of  this  power  depended  upon 
the  outcome  of  the  Revolution.  If  the  king 
could  subjugate  the  Colonies,  his  system  of 
government  would  be  justified ;  if  the  Colonies 
won  independence,  such  a  disaster  to  the  Em- 
pire would  entirely  and  forever  discredit  his 
system  of  government.  This,  in  fact,  came  to 
pass;  the  defeat  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown 
sealed  the  fate  of  Lord  North's  Ministry,  and 
with  the  fall  of  Lord  North  the  subjection  of 
Parliament  to  the  royal  will  was  at  an  end. 


ii 

The  American  Revolution  was  thus  prima- 
rily a  struggle  between  the  Colonies  and  Great 
Britain  over  the  question  of  self-government 

34 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 


struggle  which  was  bound  up  with  the 
question  of  royal  as  against  parliamentary 
government  in  England,  of  popular  govern- 
ment against  a  possible  autocracy.  But  there 
was  also  another  phase  of  the  Revolution, 
and  that  was  the  struggle  within  the  Colonies 
themselves  between  the  little  commercial  and 
landowning  aristocracies  that  had  hitherto 
governed  the  Colonies  and  the  "people,"  the 
unfranchised  "humble  folk,"  who  now  were 
coming  to  demand  a  measure  of  political 
equality.  This  struggle  runs  throughout  the 
period  of  the  controversy  with  Great  Britain 
from  1765  to  1776;  and  while  it  was  somewhat 
diminished  during  the  period  of  the  war  itself, 
it  broke  out  again  with  renewed  force  after 
the  war  was  over.  In  fact,  the  American  I 
Revolution  was  not  only  a  movement  for 
national  independence  from  Great  Britain; 
it  was  also  a  movement  for  the  democratiza- 
tion of  American  society  and  politics — a  move- 
ment which  has  continued  from  that  day  to 
this  and  which  is  the  central  theme  of  our^ 
history. 

In  1765  the  right  of  voting  in  the  American 
Colonies  for  members  of  the  colonial  assem- 
blies was  in  general  restricted  to  those  who 
possessed  property,  or  met  certain  educational 
or  religious  tests.  In  most  colonies  a  majority, 
and  in  all  a  considerable  minority,  of  the  adult 

35 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

male  citizens  were  disfranchised.  Besides, 
the  methods  of  naming  candidates  and  of  vot- 
ing were  such  as  to  place  a  determining  in- 
fluence in  the  hands  of  a  small  coterie  of 
wealthy  families — the  so-called  "best  fami- 
lies" of  the  province.  These  best  families, 
together  with  the  governors,  who  were  mostly 
appointed  from  England  and  frequently  from 
among  these  very  families,  made  a  very  dis- 
tinctive and  powerful  upper  class' — a  well- 
intrenched  aristocracy  which  was  the  real 
governing  force  in  each  colony.  In  Virginia 
and  South  Carolina  this  class  was  composed 
of  the  great  tidewater  planters,  whose  ex- 
tensive fields  of  tobacco,  rice,  and  indigo  were 
cultivated  by  means  of  negro  slaves.  In  the 
Middle  colonies  there  were  not  only  the  great 
landowners,  whose  estates  were  cultivated 
mainly  by  tenant  labor,  but  also  the  wealthy 
commercial  families  of  the  cities  of  New  York 
and  Philadelphia.  In  New  England  there 
were  fewer  great  estates  and  the  small  free- 
holders were  more  numerous;  but  there  also 
a  political  and  social  aristocracy  had  come 
into  existence — descendants  of  the  old  official 
and  clerical  leaders  closely  allied  with  fam- 
ilies that  had  gained  prominence  in  law  or 
commerce. 

Sharply  distinguished  from  these  "gentle- 
folk,"  in  dress  and  manners  as  well  as  in 

36 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

social  and  political  influence,  was  the  great 
mass  of  the  population — artisans  and  labor- 
ers, tenant  and  small  freehold  farmers.  In 
the  Middle  and  Southern  colonies  this  dis- 
tinction had  come  to  have  a  territorial  as 
well  as  a  social  and  economic  basis.  In  Vir- 
ginia the  poorer  classes  had  moved  "west" 
beyond  the  first  falls  of  the  rivers,  into  the 
piedmont  or  "up-country,"  where  land  was 
plentiful  and  cheap;  while  in  Pennsylvania 
German  and  Scotch-Irish  immigrants  in  great 
numbers  had  settled  in  the  interior  counties 
and  from  there  had  followed  the  valleys  south- 
ward into  the  Virginia  and  Maryland  up- 
country  and  even  as  far  south  as  the  Carolinas. 
In  this  back-country  the  soil  was  not  adapted 
to  tobacco  or  rice.  Here  there  were  no  great 
estates,  no  slaves,  and  few  "servants,"  no 
houses  with  pretensions  to  architectural  ex- 
cellence, no  leisured  class  with  opportunities 
or  inclinations  for  acquiring  the  manners  or 
the  tastes  of  the  "gentleman."  Here  every 
man  earned  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow, 
manners  were  rude  and  primitive,  institutions 
were  simple,  men  lived  close  to  the  soil, 
equality  was  a  fact,  and  freedom  was  limited 
only  by  the  stubborn  resistance  of  nature. 

The  conflict  between  the  interests  and  ideals 
of  these  two  classes  and  these  two  regions  was 
already  beginning  when  the  controversy  be- 

37 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

tween  the  British  government  and  the  Col- 
onies began;  and  from  the  first  the  two  is- 
sues became  more  or  less  identified.  This 
was  strikingly  the  case  in  Virginia  in  respect 
to  the  resolutions  to  be  adopted  in  protest 
against  the  Stamp  Act.  In  the  session  of 
the  House  of  Burgesses  of  1765  the  old  lead- 
ers of  the  tidewater  region,  who  had  always 
managed  the  colony,  were  opposed  to  adopt- 
ing any  resolutions  at  that  time,  since  they  had 
already,  in  1764,  drawn  up  a  mild  protest 
against  the  passage  of  the  act.  But  there  was 
present  at  this  session  the  famous  orator  and 
tribune  of  the  people,  Patrick  Henry,  who  had 
recently  made  a  name  for  himself  by  expos- 
ing the  shady  actions  of  the  treasurer,  John 
Robinson,  a  prominent  member  of  the  aris- 
tocracy. This  was  equivalent  to  challenging 
the  supremacy  of  the  little  group  of  tidewater 
planters,  who  had  come  to  look  upon  the 
management  of  the  colony  as  their  vested 
duty.  The  episode  had  given  Patrick  Henry 
a  great  name  in  the  province,  and  had  got 
him  a  considerable  following  among  the  young 
men  and  small  planters  throughout  the  prov- 
ince, and  especially  in  the  back-country  where 
he  was  born  and  raised  and  which  he  repre- 
sented. In  this  session  of  1765  Henry  took 
the  lead  against  the  conservatives  in  intro- 
ducing and  passing  a  set  of  resolutions  which 

38 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

protested  much  more  vigorously  against  the 
Stamp  Act  than  the  old  leaders  desired. 

The  episode  was  afterward  described  by 
Thomas  Jefferson,  at  that  time  a  young  law 
student,  who  watched  with  interest  the  doings 
of  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses. 

Mr.  Henry  moved  and  Mr.  Johnston  seconded  these 
resolutions  successively.  They  were  opposed  by  Messrs. 
Randolph,  Bland,  Pendleton,  Wythe,  and  all  the  old 
members,  whose  influence  in  the  House  had,  till  then, 
been  unbroken.  They  did  it,  not  from  any  question 
of  our  rights,  but  on  the  ground  that  the  same  senti- 
ments had  been,  at  their  preceding  session,  expressed 
in  a  more  conciliatory  form,  to  which  the  answers  were 
not  yet  received.  But  torrents  of  sublime  eloquence 
from  Henry,  backed  by  the  solid  reasoning  of  John- 
ston, prevailed.  The  last,  however,  and  strongest 
resolution  was  carried  but  by  a  single  vote.  The  debate 
on  it  was  most  bloody.  I  was  then  but  a  student,  and 
stood  at  the  door  of  communication  between  the  House 
and  the  lobby;  .  .  .  and  I  well  remember  that,  after  the 
members  on  the  division  were  told  and  declared  from 
the  chair,  Peyton  Randolph  came  out  at  the  door  where 
I  was  standing,  and  said,  as  he  entered  the  lobby, 
"By  God!  I  would  have  given  five  hundred  guineas  for 
a  single  vote." 

This  was  only  the  beginning  of  a  long  strug- 
gle between  the  old  leaders,  endeavoring  to 
maintain  their  social  and  political  predomi- 
nance in  the  province,  and  the  young  radicals, 
backed  by  the  people  of  the  back-country,  of 
<±  39 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

whom  Patrick  Henry  and  Thomas  Jefferson 
and  Richard  Henry  Lee  were  the  leaders.  In 
every  stage  of  the  conflict  with  Great  Britain 
the  old  leaders  showed  themselves  more  cau- 
tious and  conservative,  the  radicals  more 
vigorous  and  uncompromising,  in  asserting 
the  rights  of  the  Colonies  and  in  advocating 
measures  of  resistance.  But  the  difference 
between  the  two  parties  went  deeper.  The 
radicals  wanted  to  democratize  the  social  and 
political  institutions  of  Virginia,  while  the  old 
leaders  wanted  to  maintain  their  supremacy; 
and  when  the  breach  with  England  finally 
came  and  a  new  constitution  had  to  be  formed, 
Jefferson  and  his  associates  attempted  to  make 
the  new  constitution  strictly  democratic,  with 
universal  manhood  suffrage,  the  abolition  of 
entail  in  land  and  of  primogeniture,  and  the 
disestablishment  of  the  Anglican  Church.  Jef- 
ferson even  went  so  far  as  to  talk  of  the  aboli- 
tion of  slavery.  The  democrats  in  Virginia 
were  not  able  to  get  everything  they  wanted ; 
but  they  accomplished  much.  They  not  only 
pushed  the  old  aristocracy  into  the  Revolu- 
tionary War,  but  they  established  a  far  more 
democratic  government  in  Virginia  than  the 
old  leaders  of  the  colony  would  have  estab- 
lished if  it  had  been  left  to  them.  It  was  the 
declaration  of  rights  prefixed  to  this  consti- 
tution that  was  translated  and  circulated  in 

40 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

France,  and  that  became  in  some  degree  a 
model  for  the  famous  French  Declaration  of 
the  Rights  of  Man  and  the  Citizen. 

Very  similar  was  the  conflict  in  Pennsyl- 
vania between  the  Scotch-Irish  and  Germans 
of  the  interior  and  the  Quaker-merchant  aris- 
tocracy of  Philadelphia.  The  people  in  the 
frontier  counties  complained  that  the  ap- 
portionment of  representatives,  the  money 
system,  and  the  organization  of  the  courts 
of  justice  were  all  devised  to  benefit  the  Quak- 
ers and  merchants  and  to  perpetuate  their 
power.  "We  apprehend,"  so  runs  a  petition 
from  the  German  and  Scotch-Irish  counties 
of  the  interior,  "that  as  freemen  and  English 
subjects  we  have  an  indisputable  title  to  the 
same  privileges  and  immunities  with  his  Maj- 
esty's other  subjects  who  reside  in  the  coun- 
ties of  Philadelphia,  Chester,  and  Bucks." 
The  Scotch-Irish  and  Germans  of  the  interior 
counties,  together  with  the  mechanics  and 
artisans  of  Philadelphia,  made  the  strength 
of  the  radical  party.  The  frontier  counties 
in  Pennsylvania,  like  the  frontier  counties  in 
Virginia,  were  strong  partizans  of  the  struggle 
against  England,  partly  because  they  had  no 
reason  to  like  England,  but  partly  because  they 
felt  that  the  argument  in  favor  of  the  rights  of 
the  Colonies  against  England  could  be  used 
equally  in  support  of  their  own  rights  against 

41 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  privileges  of  the  merchants  and  Quak- 
ers in  Pennsylvania.  In  1775-76,  when  the 
first  constitution  of  Pennsylvania  was  estab- 
lished, the  essential  issue  was  between  the 
Scotch-Irish  radicals,  who  wanted  a  strictly 
democrat  constitution,  and  the  eastern  men, 
who  wished  so  far  as  possible  to  preserve  their 
own  supremacy. 

Nowhere  was  this  conflict  between  the  popu- 
lar and  the  aristocratic  classes  more  marked 
than  in  Massachusetts.  The  most  influential 
man  in  Massachusetts  at  that  time  was 
Thomas  Hutchinson,  whose  family  had  been 
prominent  in  Boston  since  the  founding  of 
the  colony.  He  was  a  man  of  excellent  edu- 
cation and  of  great  ability,  and  in  1771,  at 
the  age  of  sixty,  had  held  nearly  every  elective 
and  appointive  office  in  the  province.  He  was 
also  a  man  of  wealth  and  related  to  most  of 
the  influential  families  of  wealth  in  Massa- 
chusetts— the  most  prominent  member  of  the 
Boston  "aristocracy"  which  had  long  gov- 
erned the  Old  Bay  Colony. 

In  sharp  contrast  to  Mr.  Hutchinson  were 
two  men  who  became  famous  leaders  in  the 
Revolution — Samuel  and  John  Adams.  In 
1765  Samuel  Adams  was  a  middle-aged  man 
who  had  lost  a  fair  patrimony,  and  who  was 
barely  able  to  support  his  family.  John  Adams 
was  a  young  lawyer,  just  coming  into  promi- 

42 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

nence;  but  he  felt  very  keenly,  as  his  inter- 
esting Diary  enables  us  to  see,  that  he  had 
not  a  fair  and  equal  opportunity  in  life  be- 
cause social  opportunity  and  political  power 
had  come  to  be  so  largely  monopolized  by  the 
small  group  of  wealthy  and  closely  interre- 
lated families  of  which  that  of  Thomas  Hutch- 
inson  was  the  chief.  And  throughout  the 
struggle  with  Great  Britain,  in  which  John 
Adams  took  a  leading  part,  it  is  clear  that  in 
his  mind  the  people  of  Massachusetts  were 
endeavoring  to  emancipate  themselves,  not 
only  from  the  autocratic  control  of  the  Eng- 
lish government,  but  also  from  the  domina- 
tion of  a  Boston  aristocracy;  his  animosity 
toward  Thomas  Hutchinson  was  much  greater 
than  toward  King  George  or  Lord  North. 

The  way  in  which  these  two  issues  were 
often  united  is  well  illustrated  in  connection 
with  the  famous  Stamp  Act  controversy. 
The  Stamp  Act  required,  among  other  things, 
that  practically  all  legal  documents  should 
be  executed  on  stamped  paper.  Almost  every 
one  in  the  colony,  including  Mr.  Hutchinson, 
was  opposed  to  the  Stamp  Act;  but  the  Stamp 
Act  could  be  resisted  in  one  of  two  ways- 
one  legal  and  the  other  illegal.  The  legal  way 
to  resist  it  was  not  to  execute  any  document 
which  required  the  use  of  the  stamped  papers; 
the  illegal  way  was  to  go  on  executing  docu- 

43 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

ments  just  as  if  no  Stamp  Act  existed.  Thomas 
Hutchinson,  and  most  men  of  wealth  and  posi- 
tion in  the  colony,  preferred  to  resist  the 
Stamp  Act  in  the  legal  way,  and  they  there- 
fore adjourned  the  courts  of  law  from  time  to 
time.  This  method  appealed  to  conservative 
men,  whose  incomes  were  assured,  who  were 
not  much  affected  by  a  temporary  cessation 
of  business,  and  who  wished  not  to  compromise 
their  position  by  any  action  that  could  be 
called  illegal.  But  rising  young  lawyers  like 
John  Adams  found  that  if  the  courts  closed 
their  fees  were  cut  off  and  their  position  at 
once  became  precarious.  The  closing  of  the 
courts,  John  Adams  wrote  in  his  Diary,  "will 
make  a  great  chasm  in  my  affairs,  if  it  does 
not  reduce  me  to  distress."  And  in  another 
place  he  says  that  he  was  just  at  the  point  of 
winning  a  competence  and  a  reputation  "when 
this  execrable  Stamp  Act  came  for  my  ruin 
and  that  of  my  country." 

This  naive  statement  reveals  one  of  the 
reasons — not  the  only  reason,  but  one  of  the 
reasons — why  John  Adams,  and  all  those  who 
depended  on  fees  and  wages  for  a  living,  those 
whose  interest  it  was  to  have  business  in  a 
flourishing  condition,  were  in  favor  of  the 
more  radical  method,  the  illegal  method,  of 
resisting  the  Stamp  Act,  while  men  of  wealth 
who  lived  on  their  incomes  could  afford  to 

44 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

idopt  the  more  cautious  and  conservative 
method.  And  thus  it  happened  that  John 
Adams  came  to  think  Thomas  Hutchinson  as 
much  an  enemy  of  colonial  rights  as  Mr. 
Grenville.  He  convinced  himself  that  Mr. 
Hutchinson  and  his  wealthy  friends,  while 
professing  to  oppose  the  Stamp  Act,  were 
really  tools  of  the  British  government  and 
were  trying  in  this  indirect  way  to  force  the 
people  to  submit  to  the  Stamp  Act.  He  rea- 
soned that  the  Boston  aristocracy  was  able 
to  maintain  its  privileged  position  in  Massa- 
chusetts only  because  it  was  backed  by  the 
British  government;  and  thus  the  struggle 
against  parliamentary  taxation  came  to  be 
identified  with  the  struggle  against  a  privileged 
class  in  the  colony. 

It  is  this  aspect  of  the  Revolution  that  gives 
it  its  chief  significance  for  modern  democracy. 
The  privileged  classes  in  the  Colonies,  gener- 
ally speaking,  never  really  desired  separation 
from  Great  Britain.  They  took  old  England 
as  their  ideal.  Outside  of  New  England  most 
educated  men  were  educated  in  England,  and 
wished  for  nothing  better  than  to  fashion 
their  clothes,  their  houses,  their  minds,  and 
their  manners  on  the  best  English  models. 
They  opposed  parliamentary  taxation  be- 
cause they  wanted  to  manage  their  own 
affairs  in  miniature  parliaments,  where  they 

45 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

could  carry  on  miniature  contests  with  the 
governors  for  the  control  of  the  purse,  after 
the  manner  of  the  English  Parliament  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  In  no  sense  were  they 
democrats;  and  they  were  as  much  afraid  of 
radical  movements  in  the  Colonies  as  they 
were  of  British  oppression.  They  wanted  to 
preserve  their  liberties  against  Parliament, 
without  sharing  their  privileges  with  the  peo- 
ple in  the  Colonies.  They  wanted  home  rule, 
but  they  wanted  to  rule  at  home.  Left  to 
themselves,  the  governing  classes  in  America 
would  never  have  carried  the  contest  to  the 
point  of  rebellion,  would  never  have  created 
an  independent  state. 

The  opposition  to  this  ideal  gradually  trans- 
formed the  Revolution  into  a  social  as  well 
as  a  political  movement.  Men  of  true  demo- 
cratic feeling  came  to  see  that  the  mere  main- 
tenance of  what  were  called  English  liberties 
would  leave  things  much  as  they  were,  even 
if  the  Colonies  should  separate  from  Great 
Britain.  They  wanted  not  simply  an  in- 
dependent state,  but  a  new  kind  of  state. 
They  were  aiming  at  something  more  than 
could  be  justified  by  an  appeal  to  the  cus- 
tomary rights  of  Englishmen.  Whether  the 
customary  rights  of  Englishmen  supported 
the  contention  of  the  Colonies  or  the  conten- 
tions of  the  king  depended  upon  fine  points 

46 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in  law  and  history.  But  it  was  a  question 
that  could  be  ably  argued  on  both  sides.  In 
any  case,  there  was  nothing  in  the  customary 
rights  of  Englishmen  that  could  be  used  in 
support  of  equal  rights  for  all,  poor  and  rich 
alike.  And  so,  step  by  step,  the  radical  leaders 
broadened  out  their  political  theory,  and  came 
finally  to  rest  their  cause  not  merely  on  the 
positive  and  prescriptive  rights  of  English- 
men, but  upon  the  natural  and  universal  rights 
of  man  as  well. 

As  the  Revolution  ceased  to  be  a  mere  con- 
test for  the  rights  of  Englishmen  and  took 
on  the  character  of  a  contest  for  the  rights 
of  man,  it  acquired  an  idealistic  and  semi- 
mystical  quality  and  gathered  to  itself,  as  all 
such  movements  do,  the  emotional  force  of  a 
religious  conviction.  Mr.  Lecky  says  that  the 
American  Revolution  was  essentially  sordid, 
being  concerned  fundamentally  with  a  mere 
money  dispute.  There  was  much  that  was 
sordid  in  the  motives  and  the  actions  of  many 
men  who  took  part  in  the  Revolutionary  War, 
but  nothing  could  be  more  profoundly  wrong 
than  to  regard  the  principal  leaders  as  in- 
spired by  no  higher  motive  than  that  of  safe- 
guarding their  property.  The  conflict  with 
Great  Britain  began  as  a  money  dispute;  but 
in  the  end  it  came  to  be  transfigured,  in  the 
minds  of  the  American  patriots,  into  one  of  the 

47 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

great  epic  conflicts  of  the  world.  We  have 
ourselves  lived  through  such  a  transfiguration. 
The  Great  War  began  as  a  conflict  for  land 
and  trade,  but  it  speedily  took  on,  in  the 
minds  of  the  people  concerned,  the  aspect  of 
a  titanic  struggle  between  the  powers  of  light 
and  of  darkness,  a  struggle  which  men  fondly, 
if  vainly,  hoped  would  bring  in  a  new  interna- 
tional order  based  upon  the  principles  of  jus- 
tice and  humanity.  So  it  was  with  the 
American  Revolution.  American  patriots  came 
to  think  of  themselves  as  hazarding  their  lives 
and  their  fortunes  for  the  sake  of  a  new  social 
order,  the  ideal  society  founded  upon  the  en- 
during principles  of  liberty,  equality,  and 
fraternity. 

There  is  a  striking  similarity  between  the 
ideals  and  the  language  of  the  American  pa- 
triots and  the  radical  leaders  of  the  French 
Revolution.  They  speak  with  the  same  lyrical 
enthusiasm,  like  men  who  are  defending  and 
propagating  a  new  religion.  "  It  is  impossible," 
writes  Richard  Henry  Lee,  "that  vice  can  so 
triumph  over  virtue  as  that  the  slaves  of 
Tyranny  should  succeed  against  the  brave 
and  generous  asserters  of  Liberty  and  the  just 
rights  of  humanity."  Consider  the  dry  com- 
mon sense  with  which  Doctor  Johnson  disposed 
of  the  alleged  tyranny  of  Great  Britain :  "  But 
I  say,  if  the  rascals  are  so  prosperous,  op- 

48 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

pression  has  agreed  with  them,  or  there  has 
been  no  oppression";  and  contrast  this  with 
the  reverent  solemnity  with  which  John  Adams 
speaks  of  his  associates  as  belonging  to  "that 
mighty  line  of  heroes  and  confessors  and 
martyrs  who  since  the  beginning  of  history 
have  done  battle  for  the  dignity  of  and  happi- 
ness of  human  nature  against  the  leagued  as- 
sailants of  both." 

John  Adams  was  one  of  the  most  hard- 
headed  of  the  radical  leaders,  no  unbalanced 
visionary  dreaming  fantastic  dreams,  and  yet 
John  Adams,  in  1775,  clearly  thought  of 
himself  as  engaged  in  a  great  epoch-making 
event,  far  transcending  any  mere  rupture  of 
the  British  Empire  or  the  establishment  of  an 
independent  state.  This  is  how  he  thinks  of 
the  meaning  of  the  Revolution : 

The  form  of  government  which  you  admire  when 
its  principles  are  pure  is  admirable;  indeed,  it  is  pro- 
ductive of  everything  which  is  great  and  excellent 
among  men.  But  its  principles  are  as  easily  destroyed 
as  human  nature  is  corrupted.  Such  a  government  is 
only  to  be  supported  by  pure  religion  or  austere  morals. 
Public  virtue  cannot  exist  in  a  nation  without  private, 
and  public  virtue  is  the  only  foundation  of  republics. 
There  must  be  a  positive  passion  for  the  public  good, 
the  public  interest,  honor,  power,  and  glory  established 
in  the  minds  of  the  people,  or  there  can  be  no  repub- 
lican government,  or  any  real  liberty,  and  this  public 
passion  must  be  superior  to  all  private  passions.  .  .  . 

49 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

...  Is  there  in  the  world  a  nation  which  deserves 
this  character?  There  have  been  several,  but  they  are 
no  more.  Our  dear  Americans  perhaps  have  as  much 
of  it  as  any  nation  now  existing,  and  New  England 
perhaps  has  more  than  the  rest  of  America.  But  I 
have  seen  all  along  my  life  such  selfishness  and  little- 
ness even  in  New  England  that  I  sometimes  tremble  to 
think  that,  although  we  are  engaged  in  the  best  cause 
that  ever  employed  the  human  heart,  yet  the  prospect 
of  success  is  doubtful  not  for  want  of  power  or  of 
wisdom,  but  of  virtue. 

In  no  unreal  sense  John  Adams  and  his  as- 
sociates thought  of  themselves  as  undertaking 
something  new  in  the  history  of  the  world; 
they  were  undertaking  the  novel  experiment 
of  founding  that  ideal  community,  a  republic 
founded  upon  virtue  and  devoted  to  the  re- 
generation of  the  human  race. 


in 

It  is  thus  clear  that  the  American  Revolu- 
tion was  a  twofold  movement :  it  was  a  move- 
•  ment  for  the  separation  from  Great  Britain; 
;  it  was  also  a  movement  for  the  abolition  of 
!  class    privilege,    for    the    democratization   of 
/  American  politics  and  society,  in  some  measure 
for  the  inauguration  of  an  ideal  state.     The 
Declaration  of  Independence  reflects  and  ex- 
presses this  twofold  character  of  the  Revolu- 
tion.   On  the  one  hand  it  is  a  declaration  of 

So 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 


the  reasons  which  justified  the  separation 
from  Great  Britain;  on  the  other  hand  it  is  a 
charter  of  democracy,  a  charter  which  ex- 
presses in  classic  form  the  universal  rights  of 
mankind. 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  is  a  short 
document,  which  may  be  printed  in  four  small 
pages ;  and  the  larger  part  of  it  is  devoted  to 
the  specific  grievances  against  the  King  of 
Great  Britain.  The  Parliament  is  not  men- 
tioned because  the  revolutionists  had  ac- 
cepted, at  that  time,  the  federal  theory  of 
the  Empire — the  theory  that  the  Colonies  had 
never  been  subject  to  the  Parliament,  but 
only  to  the  king.  And  so  the  Declaration, 
affirming  that  "the  history  of  the  present 
King  of  Great  Britain  is  a  history  of  repeated 
injuries  and  usurpations,  all  having  in  direct 
object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute  Tyr- 
anny over  these  States,"  proceeds  to  enumer- 
ate a  long  list  of  such  injuries  and  usurpa- 
tions, all  of  which  have  to  do  with  specific 
acts :  laying  taxes  on  the  Colonies  or  designed 
to  limit  or  destroy  the  legislative  indepen- 
dence of  the  colonial  governments.  This  part 
of  the  Declaration  is  now  rarely  read  and  never 
remembered ;  and  rightly  so,  for  these  specific 
acts  charged  against  George  III,  and  once  so 
vital,  are  now  dead  issues. 

But  there  is  another  part  of  the  Declara- 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

tion — a  short  ten  lines  of  print — which  every 
one  thinks  of  when  the  Declaration  is  men- 
tioned, and  which  is  the  only  part  of  that 
famous  document  which  most  people  have 
ever  kept  in  mind.  This  part  of  the  Declara- 
tion, the  most  significant  and  the  most  fa- 
mous part,  is  as  follows: 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all 
men  are  created  equal,  :ni(l  lh:ir  they  .'in-  endowed  by 
their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable  Rights,  that 
among  these  are  Life,  Liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
Happiness.  That  to  secure  these  rights  Governments 
are  instituted  among  men,  deriving  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed,  that  whenever  any 
Form  of  Government  becomes  destructive  of  these 
ends,  it  is  the  Right  of  the  People  to  alter  or  abolish 
it,  and  to  institute  new  Government,  laying  its  founda- 
tions on  such  principles  and  organizing  its  powers  in 
such  form,  as  to  them  shall  seem  most  likely  to  effect 
their  Safety  and  Happiness. 

On  first  thought  it  may  appear  strange  that 
the  part  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
which  is  most  famous  and  best  remembered 
is  precisely  the  part  which  is  least  directly 
concerned  with  the  grievances  which  led  the 
Colonies  to  declare  independence.  But  the 
reason  for  this  is  simple.  It  is  that  the  specific 
I'jievames  of  the  Colonies  concern  the  world 
but  little,  while  the  principles  upon  which 
just  government  rests  are  of  universal  in- 

5* 


AN   EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 


terest.  The  few  phrases  which  make  the 
Declaration  famous  deal  not  with  the  rights 
of  Americans  or  Englishmen  only,  but  with 
the  rights  of  man;  and  in  so  far  as  the  prin- 
ciples which  they  proclaim  are  valid,  they 
are  valid  for  Frenchmen,  or  Russians,  or 
Chinese  no  less  than  for  Americans  and 
Englishmen.  This  is  why  these  phrases  still 
live,  and  this  is  why  the  American  Revolu- 
tion has  a  universal  and  permanent  as  well 
as  a  local  and  temporary  impm  lance.  This 
universal  significance  is  that  for  the  first  time 
in  the  modern  world  a  new  and  potentially 
powerful  nation  was  "dedicated  to  the  prop- 
osition that  all  men  are  created  equal,"  and 
founded  upon  the  principle  that  the  legitimacy 
of  any  government  rests  upon  the  will  of  the 
people  instead  of  the  will  of  God  or  of  the 
State.  And  for  a  hundred  years  the  example 
of  the  United  States  has  been  one  of  the  strong- 
est supports  of  this  new  faith  which,  however 
often  forgotten  or  betrayed,  is  now  accepted 
by  the  better  part  of  the  world. 

When  the  Revolutionary  War  began  few 
people  in  Europe  supposed  that  the  Colonies 
could  win  their  independence.  If  they  had 
been  entirely  united  their  chances  would  have 
been  better.  But  the  fact  is  that  at  least 
OIK  -third  of  the  people  (this  is  the  estimate 
of  John  Adams)  were  indifferent  or  actively 

S3 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

opposed  to  the  American  cause.  These  were 
the  Loyalists — Americans  who  remained  loyal 
to  Great  Britain.  They  were  not  only  nu- 
merous, but  they  included  many  of  the  ablest 
and  most  influential  men  in  the  Colonies, 
being  largely  recruited  from  the  upper  classes 
— landowners,  merchants,  clergymen,  and  offi- 
cials, who  had  hitherto  constituted  the  govern- 
ing class,  and  who  opposed  the  Revolution 
quite  as  much  because  of  their  fear  of  democ- 
racy as  on  account  of  any  strong  attachment 
to  Great  Britain.  This  division  within  their 
own  ranks  greatly  weakened  the  colonists 
and  gave  to  the  struggle  something  of  the 
character  of  a  civil  war. 

But  besides  this  class  division,  which  ap- 
peared in  every  colony,  the  chances  of  suc- 
cess were  immensely  lessened  by  the  per- 
sistence and  even  the  accentuation  of  the 
old  rivalries  between  the  different  colonies. 
"There  ought  to  be  no  New  England  man, 
no  New-Yorker,  known  on  the  continent,  but 
all  of  us  Americans."  So  Christopher  Gadsden 
wrote  at  the  time  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress 
in  1765.  It  was  a  noble  ideal  of  which  most 
men  no  doubt  vaguely  felt  the  force;  but 
neither  New  England  men  nor  New-Yorkers 
nor  South-Carolinians  could  be  wholly  trans- 
formed overnight.  It  took  a  hundred  years 
to  effect  this  transformation;  and  the  student 

54 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

of  the  Revolution  is  sometimes  amused,  but 
more  often  amazed  and  disheartened,  by  the 
petty  jealousies,  the  personal  animosities,  the 
hopeless  provincialism,  and  the  sordid  cor- 
ruption which  everywhere  prevailed  and  which 
but  gave  an  added  luster  to  the  fame  of  those 
outstanding  Americans,  such  as  Washington 
and  John  Adams  and  Franklin,  without  whose 
services  the  Revolution  must  have  completely 
failed. 

Of  these  three  illustrious  leaders  the  name 
of  Washington  stands  out  as  a  symbol  of  all 
that  is  heroic  and  admirable  in  the  annals  of 
his  country.  He  was  a  Virginia  planter,  ac- 
counted the  wealthiest  man  in  the  Colonies, 
whose  life  had  been  chiefly  given  to  managing, 
with  the  most  scrupulous  care  and  with  the 
highest  efficiency,  the  estate  which  lay  on 
the  south  bank  of  the  Potomac  at  Mount 
Vernon.  Scarcely  a  politician,  he  was  yet  a 
man  of  broad  vision,  who  foresaw  a  great 
future  for  his  country  and  was  actively  in- 
terested in  the  development  of  the  great  west 
that  lay  beyond  the  Alleghanies.  Such  mili- 
tary experience  as  he  possessed  had  been 
gained  in  the  French  and  Indian  War;  and 
particularly  in  the  famous  Braddock  Expedi- 
tion he  had  revealed  a  knowledge  of  frontier 
Indian  fighting  which  the  British  general  did 
not  possess  and  declined  to  take  advantage  of, 

5  55 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  in  this  disastrous  retreat  he  had  exhibited 
a  courage  and  a  resourcefulness  which  had 
won  him  the  respect  of  the  British  and  the 
confidence  of  his  countrymen. 

It  was  on  June  17,  1775,  that  this  Virginia 
colonel  was  appointed  to  be  "  General  and 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  armies  of  the 
United  Colonies."  It  was  a  high-sounding 
title  for  the  leader  of  the  nondescript  collection 
of  soldiers  who  fought  the  Revolutionary  War; 
but  no  man  who  ever  undertook  a  great  task 
was  better  fitted  for  its  manifold  duties.  For 
the  exhibition  of  brilliant  military  genius 
there  were  during  the  eight  years  of  war  but 
few  opportunities;  but  for  patience  and  reso- 
lution, for  sound,  practical  judgment,  re- 
sourcefulness, for  ability  to  make  the  most  of 
an  untoward  situation  or  a  hopeless  defeat, 
for  the  spirit  that  could  inspire  soldiers  and 
civilians  with  loyalty  to  a  cause  which  always 
seemed  irretrievably  lost — for  all  these  quali- 
ties the  American  War  of  Independence  fur- 
nished a  test  which  only  a  great  soul  could 
have  met  with  success. 

It  was  the  merit  of  Washington  that  he 
possessed  these  qualities,  each  in  perfection, 
and  all  in  the  happiest  combination.  He  was 
the  man  of  staid  mind  and  impregnable  char- 
acter who  gathered  all  the  scattered  and  dis- 
cordant forces  of  the  Revolution  and  directed 

56 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

them  to  the  achievement  of  the  great  end, 
so  modest  that  he  thought  himself  incompe- 
tent to  the  task,  yet  of  such  heroic  resolution 
that  neither  difficulties  nor  reverses  nor  be- 
trayals could  bring  him  to  despair;  a  man  of 
rectitude,  whose  will  was  steeled  to  finer 
temper  by  every  defeat,  and  who  was  not  to 
be  turned,  by  any  failure  or  success,  by  cal- 
umny, by  gold,  or  by  the  dream  of  empire, 
from  the  straight  path  of  his  purpose.  At  the 
end  of  eight  years  of  unremitting  labor,  which 
depleted  his  fortune  and  for  which  he  asked 
no  more  than  the  payment  of  his  personal 
expenses,  that  purpose  was  at  last  achieved. 

No  man  was  ever  more  rightly  called  the 
father  of  his  country;  but  even  the  indomi- 
table resolution  of  Washington,  supported  by 
the  dogged  persistence  and  garrulous  common 
sense  of  John  Adams  and  the  suppleness  and 
resource  of  Franklin's  intelligence — even  these 
would  not  have  sufficed  to  win  independence. 
It  was  America's  good  fortune  that  in  this 
decisive  hour  of  her  history  France  came  to 
stand  by  her  side.  Without  the  aid  of  France, 
the  men  who  signed  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence would  have  pledged  their  lives, 
their  fortunes,  and  their  sacred  honor  in  vain, 
and  would  have  been  known  to  history  as 
rebels  against  rightful  authority  instead  of 
defenders  of  human  liberty. 

57 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  influences  that  brought  France  to 
stand  with  America  bear  a  curiously  apt  rela- 
tion to  these  two  characteristic  phases  of  the 
Revolution  that  have  been  mentioned.  No 
one  could  have  had  less  sympathy  with  re- 
bellious subjects  proclaiming  the  doctrine  of 
popular  sovereignty  than  Louis  XVI,  the  chief 
exemplar  of  autocracy  in  Europe ;  but  no  one 
could  regard  with  greater  satisfaction  the  dis- 
ruption of  the  British  Empire.  For  a  hundred 
years  England  and  France  had  struggled  in 
peace  and  in  war,  on  land  and  on  the  sea,  for 
the  possession  of  the  New  World  as  the  basis 
of  maritime  and  commercial  supremacy.  And 
England  had  won.  In  every  stage  England 
had  won;  and  never  so  completely  as  in  the 
last  war.  The  Peace  of  Paris  of  1763,  by  which 
France  had  been  expelled  from  America  and 
India,  was  the  profoundest  humiliation  which 
France  had  suffered,  and  the  memory  of  it 
still  rankled. 

Inevitably,  therefore,  as  a  matter  of  prac- 
tical politics,  the  French  government  sought 
to  redress  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe 
and  the  world  by  diminishing  the  power  of 
Great  Britain.  The  persistent  promoter  of 
this  policy  was  the  Foreign  Minister,  Ver- 
gennes,  who  watched  with  delight  the  grow- 
ing dispute  between  the  mother  country  and 
the  American  provinces,  and  who  labored 

58  ' 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

from  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  to  bring  France 
into  alliance  with  the  revolting  Colonies. 
Early  in  the  war,  through  a  fictitious  business 
firm  organized  by  the  playwright,  Beaumar- 
chais,  the  government  furnished  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars'  worth  of  supplies  and  mili- 
tary stores;  after  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence Vergennes  arranged  with  Franklin 
for  a  regular  subsidy  of  two  hundred  thousand 
dollars  a  year;  and  finally,  after  the  great 
victory  of  the  colonial  troops  at  Saratoga, 
an  open  military  and  commercial  treaty  was 
signed  between  the  United  States  of  America, 
recently  founded  upon  the  revolutionary  prin- 
ciple of  popular  sovereignty,  and  his  Most 
Christian  Majesty,  Louis  XVI,  by  Grace  of 
God  King  of  France  and  Navarre. 

So  far  as  the  French  government  was  con- 
cerned the  alliance  between  the  two  coun- 
tries was  inspired  by  the  desire  to  disrupt 
the  British  Empire  and  thereby  increase  the 
power  of  France.  But  the  Franco-American 
alliance  was  something  more  than  a  diplomatic 
entente.  The  alliance  was  welcomed  in  France 
with  immense  popular  enthusiasm;  and  this 
enthusiasm  was  inspired,  not  by  hatred  of 
England  (never  were  the  English  more  ad- 
mired in  France  than  at  this  time),  but  by  a 
profound  sympathy  with  the  ideals  of  liberty 
and  human  welfare  upon  which  the  Revolu- 

59 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

tion  was  based  and  which  found  classic  ex- 
pression in  the  famous  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence. Within  half  a  century  a  new 
spirit  had  arisen  in  France.  A  generation  of 
brilliant  writers,  of  whom  Voltaire,  Montes- 
quieu, and  Rousseau  were  the  leaders,  had 
transformed  the  thinking  and  the  aspirations 
of  the  French  people.  By  trenchant  criticism 
and  corrosive  satire  and  passionate  denunci- 
ation of  corruption,  hypocrisy,  and  injus- 
tice, they  destroyed  the  moral  foundations  of 
the  monarchy  and  the  Church  and  prepared 
the  way  for  that  great  Revolution  which 
was  destined  to  transform  the  old  European 
world. 

Thus  it  happened  that  in  1776  the  French, 
like  the  Americans,  were  dreaming  of  a  new 
era.  They  had  caught  the  vision  of  a  regener- 
ated society — a  society  in  which  enlightenment 
would  banish  ignorance  and  vice,  in  which 
selfishness  and  brutality  would  give  way  to  a 
kindly  fraternity,  in  which  the  generous  and 
humane  instincts  of  the  natural  man  would 
find  expression  in  law  and  customs  designed 
to  establish  and  perpetuate  the  general  wel- 
fare. And  so  it  was  that  in  this  soft  spring- 
time of  the  modern  world  forward-looking 
men  observed  with  profound  interest  the  birth 
of  a  new  nation  on  the  western  continent. 
Repelled  by  the  corrupt  and  artificial  life  of 

60 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Europe,  everywhere  encumbered  with  the  de- 
bris of  worn-out  institutions,  they  turned  to 
America  as  a  kind  of  concrete  example  of  their 
imagined  state  of  nature.  Their  very  igno- 
rance of  America  enabled  them  to  confer  upon 
it  more  virtues  than  it  in  fact  possessed.  In 
contrast  with  Europe,  so  oppressed  with  de- 
fenseless tyrannies  and  useless  inequalities, 
how  superior  seemed  this  new  land  of  promise 
where  every  citizen  was  a  free  man,  where 
the  necessities  of  life  were  the  sure  reward 
of  industry,  where  manners  were  simple,  where 
vice  and  crime  had  almost  disappeared,  and 
where  native  incapacity  was  the  only  effective 
barrier  to  ambition! 

When  Benjamin  Franklin  arrived  in  France 
in  1776  he  was  therefore  something  more  than 
the  official  representive  of  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States.  To  the  French  mind  he  was 
the  incarnation  of  the  qualities  which  a  state 
founded  on  reason  and  nature  would  tend  to 
develop  in  all  men.  This  man  who  had  begun 
life  as  a  printer's  boy  and  was  now  the  chosen 
representative  of  his  country  on  a  difficult 
mission,  this  self-educated  philosopher  whose 
discoveries  were  known  to  every  savant  in 
Europe,  this  Friend  of  the  Human  Race  who 
had  "wrested  lightning  from  Heaven  and  the 
scepter  from  the  Tyrant's  hand"— this  man 
was,  after  all,  no  more  than  one  of  nature's 

61 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

noblemen,  such  as  free  institutions  might  be 
expected  to  produce. 

And  in  some  ways  Franklin  was  better  than 
his  reputation.  The  suppleness  of  his  plastic 
mind  enabled  him  to  take  on  without  effort 
the  external  qualities  of  the  French  tempera- 
ment, while  retaining  the  homely  wit  and  wis- 
dom and  the  serene  and  imperturbable  geni- 
ality which  was  his  native  character.  The 
result  was  that  never  before  nor  since  has  any 
man  in  a  foreign  country  received  such  con- 
tinued applause  or  been  the  object  of  such  uni- 
versal affection  as  fell  to  Franklin  in  France. 
John  Adams,  who  liked  the  French  none  too 
well  and  who  might  have  felt  the  jealousy  of 
a  less  successful  rival,  said  of  Franklin : 

His  reputation  was  more  universal  than  that  of 
Leibnitz  or  Newton,  Frederick  or  Voltaire;  and  his 
character  more  beloved  and  esteemed  than  any  or 
all  of  them.  .  .  .  His  name  was  familiar  to  government 
and  people,  to  kings,  courtiers,  nobility,  clergy,  and 
philosophers,  as  well  as  plebeians,  to  such  a  degree  that 
there  was  scarcely  a  peasant  or  a  citizen,  a  valet  de 
chambre,  a  coachman  or  footman,  a  lady's  chamber- 
maid or  a  scullion  in  a  kitchen,  who  was  not  familiar 
with  it,  and  who  did  not  consider  him  as  a  friend  of 
humankind.  When  they  spoke  of  him,  they  seemed  to 
think  he  was  to  restore  the  Golden  Age. 

The  Golden  Age!  This  phrase  gives  us 
indeed  the  secret  of  Franklin's  popularity. 

62 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

He  was  in  French  eyes  the  beau-ideal  of  the 
natural  philosopher,  the  incarnation  of  all 
those  amiable  and  excellent  qualities  which 
were  potential  in  the  nature  of  men,  and  which 
would  be  developed  in  all  men  when  institu- 
tions were  made  to  conform  to  reason  and 
justice.  The  enthusiasm  of  the  French  people 
for  America  and  for  Franklin  was  but  the 
measure  of  their  passionate  desire  for  the  re- 
generation of  France,  a  symbol  of  the  com- 
munity of  hopes  and  ideals  which  bound  the 
two  countries  together. 


IV 

DEMOCRACY   AND    GOVERNMENT 


WHEN  the  United  States  of  America  as- 
sumed her  place  among  the  independent 
nations  of  the  earth,  the  regeneration  of  the 
human  race  was  far  from  an  accomplished 
fact.  Europeans  were  prepared  to  regard  the 
event  as  a  forecast  of  a  new  era  in  human 
history;  but  it  would  have  been  an  optimist 
indeed  who  could  have  seen  in  even  the  most 
favored  of  the  thirteen  little  states  that  com- 
posed the  new  nation  that  ideal  republic, 
founded  upon  virtue  and  assuring  the  reign 
of  felicity,  which  John  Adams  in  his  generous 
moments  had  professed  to  believe  in.  On  the 
contrary,  the  country  was  exhausted  and  de- 
moralized. The  poverty  and  destitution  which 
everywhere  prevailed  among  the  mass  of  the 
people  was  only  thrown  into  stronger  relief 
by  the  prosperity  of  those  who  had  somehow 
managed  to  preserve  their  estates,  or  of  those 
newly  rich  whose  swollen  fortunes  were  the 

64 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

reward  of  shameless  profiteering.  The  sense 
of  public  probity  had  been  immensely  weak- 
ened by  the  unrestrained  lawlessness  of  many 
years  as  well  as  by  the  unlimited  issue  of 
government  obligations  that  were  scarcely 
worth  the  paper  they  were  printed  on.  Re- 
spect for  law  had  been  half  destroyed  by  the 
feebleness  of  governments  which,  under  the 
stress  of  civil  war,  had  fallen  to  the  level  of 
imbecility.  For  many  years  after  the  treaty  of 
1783  there  was  no  question  of  an  ideal  state  or  of 
the  regeneration  of  the  human  race ;  the  ques- 
tion was  of  any  tolerable  state,  of  any  stable 
government.  The  ideal  republic  might  come,  it 
might  conceivably  come  in  America;  but  the 
immediate  task  which  confronted  the  United 
States  was  to  demonstrate  to  the  world's  satis- 
faction that  any  republic  could  endure  for  a 
generation. 

ii 

Probably  no  people  indeed  has  ever  been 
more  constantly  preoccupied  with  the  ques- 
tion of  the  proper  form  of  government  than 
the  people  of  the  United  States.  The  question 
of  government  was  one  of  the  questions  that 
drove  men  out  of  Europe  into  America  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  colonial  assemblies 
were  perpetually  quarreling  with  the  governor 
over  their  respective  powers.  The  Revolution 

65 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

turned  upon  a  question  of  government;  and 
throughout  the  Revolutionary  War  and  for 
some  years  after,  one  chief  occupation  of  the 
people  was  the  manufacture  of  constitutions. 
Having  finally  adopted  a  federal  constitution 
in  1787,  the  people  and  their  leaders  began  to 
discuss  the  question  of  how  it  ought  to  be  in- 
terpreted. They  adopted  the  constitution 
first  and  then  tried  to  find  out  what  it  meant, 
but  never  could  agree,  and  at  last  had  to  fight 
a  desperate  civil  war  to  determine  the  matter. 
Nevertheless,  these  constant  wrangles  about 
the  form  of  the  government,  at  least  since  the 
Revolution,  have  not,  for  the  most  part,  had 
to  do  with  fundamental  questions.  The  French 
people  have  in  the  nineteenth  century  dis- 
cussed the  question  of  government  as  much 
as  the  Americans;  but  in  France  the  dispute 
has  involved  fundamental  issues,  such  as  the 
question  of  whether  a  divine-right  monarchy 
or  a  democratic  republic  is  better.  Such  a  dis- 
pute never  has  nor  ever  could  exist  in  America ; 
and  this  is  a  fact  of  fundamental  importance 
for  an  understanding  of  American  history  and 
institutions — namely,  that  in  all  of  our  his- 
tory no  sane  person  has  ever  seriously  pro- 
posed that  a  divine-right  monarchy  or  any 
other  kind  of  monarchy  should  be  established. 
The  only  king  which  Americans  were  ever 
willing  to  recognize,  even  in  colonial  days,  was 

66 


AN   EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

a  king  who  was  too  far  away  to  have  any 
power  over  them.  The  most  deep-rooted 
political  instinct  which  Americans  have,  an 
instinct  which  determines  all  their  thinking, 
is  the  feeling  that  they  can  and  will,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  govern  themselves.  This  idea  is 
so  fixed  and  so  universally  held  that  if  any  one 
should  suggest  any  kind  of  government  other 
than  self-government  as  proper  for  Ameri- 
cans the  proposal  would  be  taken  as  a  species 
of  joke.  The  traditions  of  monarchy  and 
Church  and  nobility,  which  are  such  powerful 
influences  in  Europe  because  they  are  so  inter- 
woven in  all  European  history — these  tradi- 
tions simply  do  not  exist  in  the  United  States. 
Not  only  have  Americans  always  been  vio- 
lently opposed  to  monarchical  government, 
they  have  always  been  opposed  to  a  highly 
centralized  government,  exercising  its  au- 
thority from  a  great  distance  and  through 
officials  unknown  in  the  community  where 
they  act.  In  America  the  burden  of  proof 
commonly  rests  on  the  government.  The 
American,  therefore,  likes  to  have  a  govern- 
ment that  is  limited  as  much  as  possible, 
that  is  nicely  checked  and  balanced;  and  for 
this  reason  he  likes  to  have  a  government  that 
is  close  at  hand,  where  it  can  be  carefully 
watched  and  kept  in  its  proper  place.  From 
the  beginning  of  American  history  the  people 

67 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

have  accordingly  held  on  like  grim  death  to 
as  much  local  government  as  possible,  and 
have  surrendered  only  gradually  and  under 
pressure  any  powers  to  the  central  govern- 
ment, whether  state  or  national. 

Such  an  attitude  toward  government  is 
likely  to  be  developed  in  any  new  country 
where  people  have  to  depend  upon  themselves 
and  where  individual  initiative  is  at  a  pre- 
mium; but  the  trait  was  already  ingrained 
in  the  first  settlers.  America  was  settled,  in 
large  part,  by  people  who  left  Europe  in  order 
to  free  themselves  from  the  oppression  of 
monarchy  and  Church.  Separatists,  Puri- 
tans, Nonconformists,  Quakers,  Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterians,  Mennonites,  Dunkers — these 
names  are  associated  with  those  Europeans 
who  were  so  eccentric  in  their  views  that  they 
could  not  live  comfortably  at  home.  They 
were  opposed  to  monarchy,  opposed  to  heredi- 
tary nobility,  opposed  to  bishops,  opposed  to 
May-poles,  opposed  to  lawn  sleeves,  opposed  to 
almost  all  the  prevailing  ideas  and  customs. 
Being  temperamentally  cantankerous,  people 
with  whom  it  went  against  the  grain  to  submit 
to  outward  constraint,  they  were  disposed  to 
look  within  for  some  "inner  light"  or  "scru- 
ple of  conscience"  which  might  serve  as  a 
guide  to  action.  And  so,  in  order  to  be  free 
from  the  outward  constraint  of  king  or  priest 

68 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

or  social  custom,  they  came  to  America  where 
there  was  room  for  all  and  no  one  to  care  what 
they  thought  or  how  they  worshiped  or 
whether  they  had  much  or  little  government. 
Inevitably  such  eccentric  people  founded 
small  and  dispersed  communities.  The  Pil- 
grims, asserting  that  it  belongeth  not  to  the 
magistrate  "to  compel  religion,  to  plant 
churches  by  power,  and  to  force  submission 
to  Ecclesiastical  Government  by  laws  and 
penalties,"  first  went  to  Holland;  but  when 
they \could  not  be  sufficiently  "separated" 
there,  they  lifted  up  "their  eyes  to  the 
heavehsv  their  dearest  country,  and  quieted 
their  spirits."  They  also  quieted  their  spirits 
by  coming  to  the  bleak  New  England  coast 
and  settling  at  Plymouth,  a  tiny  little  com- 
munity that  maintained  its  separate  govern- 
ment for  eighty  years.  They  preferred  not 
to  unite  with  the  Puritans  who  settled  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  although  the  difference  between 
the  Puritans  and  the  Separatists  seems  to  the 
modern  mind  very  slight.  The  Puritans  them- 
selves were  no  sooner  established  at  Boston 
than  they  began  to  quarrel  over  the  precise 
nature  of  that  "due  form  of  government  both 
civil  and  ecclesiastical"  which  they  came  to 
America  to  establish;  and  some  of  them,  being 
expelled,  went  off  with  Roger  Williams  to  found 
another  tiny  commonwealth  at  Providence 

69 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

(Rhode  Island),  while  others  followed  Thomas 
Hooker  into  a  new  wilderness  and  founded 
the  colony  of  Connecticut.  Still  another  group 
of  Puritans,  coming  from  London  to  Boston, 
but  not  finding  the  due  form  of  government 
precisely  right  in  every  detail,  went  on  to  New 
Haven  and  founded  there  a  Bible  common- 
wealth that  suited  them.  In  origin  and  in 
their  ideas  of  religion  and  government,  all 
of  these  people  were  very  much  alike.  Had 
they  chosen  to  live  together  under  one  state, 
that  state,  seventy  years  after  the  first  settle- 
ment, would  have  had  a  population  of  less 
than  eighty  thousand.  But  in  spite  of  the 
extreme  hardships  of  the  wilderness,  in  spite 
of  the  danger  from  the  Indians,  these  eighty 
thousand  eccentrics  could  not  possibly  sub- 
ordinate themselves  to  a  single  government. 
They  preferred  to  live  separated,  according 
to  the  "strong  bent  of  their  spirits,"  in  five 
distinct  and  independent  states,  each  one  an 
ideal  commonwealth. 

During  a  century  and  a  half  of  colonial 
history  the  jealousy  of  local  liberties  and  the 
practice  of  local  government  became  firmly 
established,  and  each  colony  as  a  matter  of 
course  managed  its  own  affairs  in  complete 
independence  of  every  other  colony.  The 
only  bond  of  union  between  the  colonies  was 
the  British  government,  and  the  people  of 

70 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

the  various  colonies  had  usually  but  little 
intercourse  with  one  another.  When  John 
Adams  went  to  Philadelphia  in  1774  to  attend 
the  first  Continental  Congress,  he  had  never 
before  been  outside  of  New  England.  He 
entered  New  York  with  the  same  interested 
curiosity  with  which  an  American  now  goes 
for  the  first  time  to  London;  and  he  noted 
in  his  Diary,  as  the  European  tourist  might 
do,  his  impressions  of  the  people,  of  their 
dress  and  manners,  of  how  their  political  in- 
stitutions differed  from  those  of  New  England, 
and  commented  upon  the  several  kinds  of 
food  which  he  had  for  breakfast  at  the  country 
seat  of  Mr.  John  Morin  Scott. 

This  provincial  point  of  view  was  not  radi- 
cally changed  by  the  Revolution;  and  when 
independence  was  declared  each  colony  re- 
garded itself  as  an  independent  and  sovereign 
state.  It  is  true  that  independence  was  de- 
clared by  the  Continental  Congress,  but  it 
was  an  associated  declaration  of  the  thirteen 
states.  No  colony  was  bound  by  the  act  of 
Congress  until  it  gave  its  adherence  to  that 
act;  and,  in  fact,  the  colony  of  New  York 
did  not  vote  for  independence  until  July  9th, 
seven  days  after  the  resolution  was  voted  in 
Congress. 

The  resolution  by  which  Congress  voted  in 

favor    of   independence    included    a    recom- 
6  71 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

mendation  to  the  effect  that  each  state  should 
proceed  forthwith  to  form  a  new  state  govern- 
ment; and  in  fact  each  state,  assuming  full 
sovereign  rights,  established  a  government  to 
suit  itself.  The  Revolution  thus  created  thir- 
teen independent  states,  each  with  its  own 
constitution  and  its  own  government;  and 
this  system  of  state  governments  became  and 
has  remained  to  this  day  the  foundation  of 
the  United  States  and  of  its  political  system. 
The  original  state  governments  were  modeled 
upon  the  old  colonial  governments  (the  col- 
onies of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  in- 
deed retained  for  many  years  their  old  colonial 
charters  as  constitutions),  and  the  structure 
of  these  governments,  in  its  essential  features, 
was  much  the  same  in  all  the  states.  There 
were  the  county  or  town  officials  for  purely 
local  affairs;  there  were  the  elected  assemblies, 
in  most  cases  of  two  houses,  for  the  making 
of  state  laws;  and  there  were  the  governors, 
elected  directly  by  the  people  (except  in  New 
York),  to  whom  were  intrusted  the  adminis- 
trative and  executive  functions.  There  are 
now  forty-eight  states  in  the  Union.  Each 
one  has  a  written  constitution,  in  accordance 
with  which  its  government  is  organized;  and 
although  in  the  course  of  time  the  trend 
toward  a  greater  degree  of  democracy  has 
brought  about  many  modifications  in  detail, 

72 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

the  structural  features  of  municipal,  county, 
and  state  governments  remain  what  they  were 
at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

It  was  upon  this  foundation  that  the  United 
States  government  was  erected.  While  the 
sovereignty  of  the  states  was  the  accepted 
idea  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  every 
one  felt  that  the  people  of  the  Colonies  were 
in  some  measure  a  common  people  with  a 
common  destiny,  and  that,  as  they  had  united 
for  defending  their  rights  and  the  winning  of 
independence,  so  they  must  continue  to  act  to- 
gether in  their  dealings  with  the  outside  world. 
In  other  words,  it  was  agreed  that  the  thir- 
teen independent  states  ought  to  unite  in  a 
federation.  This  union  had  been  achieved 
during  the  war  by  means  of  the  Continental 
Congress;  but  the  Continental  Congress  was 
only  a  temporary  body  with  no  specifically 
determined  powers — an  assembly  of  deputies 
acting  only  upon  instruction  from  their  own 
governments,  its  authority  limited  to  recom- 
mendations, and  its  influence  such  as  the 
prestige  of  its  members  or  the  exigencies  of 
war  might  give  to  it.  To  take  the  place  of 
the  Continental  Congress,  the  states  finally 
adopted,  after  much  wrangling,  the  Articles 
of  Confederation. 

The  Articles  of  Confederation  created  a 
federal  government  without  any  effective 

73 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

power.  The  states  were  as  jealous  of  their 
sovereign  rights  then  as  states  are  now;  and 
the  creation  of  a  strong  federal  government 
was  contemplated  with  the  same  hesitancy 
with  which  the  states  of  Europe  now  contem- 
plate the  creation  of  a  strong  League  of  Na- 
tions. It  was  somehow  imagined  that  an 
effective  United  States  could  be  formed  with- 
out depriving  the  individual  states  of  any 
sovereign  rights.  The  Articles  of  Confedera- 
tion made  no  provision  for  a  federal  executive, 
and  upon  the  federal  Congress  which  was 
created  they  conferred  nothing  more  than  the 
right  of  recommending  laws  which  the  separate 
states  were  expected  to  enforce,  but  which 
in  fact  they  enforced  or  not,  as  they  saw  fit. 
Such  a  federal  union  proved  a  complete  failure. 
A  government  which  could  negotiate  treaties, 
but  could  not  execute  them ;  which  could  levy 
taxes,  but  could  not  collect  them,  merited 
and  received  the  contempt  of  every  one  both 
at  home  and  abroad.  Within  a  few  years  it 
was  found  that  in  order  to  avert  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  confederation,  as  well  as  to  protect 
the  common  interests  of  the  states  against 
foreign  aggression,  a  more  perfect  union  would 
have  to  be  formed.  This  more  perfect  union 
was  achieved  by  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu- 
tion of  1787,  which  went  into  effect  in  1789  and 
has  remained  in  force  until  the  present  time. 

74 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in 

The  Constitution  of  1787  was  declared  by 
Mr.  Gladstone  to  be  the  "grandest  work  ever 
struck  off  by  the  hand  of  man  at  a  given  time." 
The  men  who  made  it  would  not  have  claimed 
so  much  for  their  handiwork.  The  Constitu- 
tion was  a  compromise  between  many  diver- 
gent interests,  and  the  result  was  that  almost 
no  one  was  very  well  satisfied  with  it.  Some 
thought  it  created  a  government  which  was 
too  weak  to  be  effective,  and  some  thought 
it  created  a  government  so  strong  as  to  be 
dangerous.  James  Madison  defended  the 
Constitution  by  saying  that  under  all  the  cir- 
cumstances "it  was  the  best  we  could  do."  At 
the  time,  this  was  thought  to  reveal  an  opti- 
mistic attitude  of  mind;  but  most  people 
could  at  least  take  refuge  in  the  thought 
that  things  might  turn  out  better  than  was 
expected. 

If  it  could  have  been  foreseen  how  much 
power  the  federal  government  would  be  able 
to  assume,  the  Constitution  would  have  been 
rejected  by  a  great  majority  of  the  people; 
for  the  states  were  still  unwilling  to  surrender 
the  principle  of  sovereignty.  In  the  new 
Constitution,  therefore,  no  more  power  was 
conferred  upon  the  federal  government  than 
was  thought  to  be  absolutely  necessary;  and 

75 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

hence  the  fundamental  legal  principle  which 
governs  the  distribution  of  the  power  between 
the  federal  and  the  state  governments,  re- 
spectively, is  this:  The  states  have  all  powers 
not  expressly  conferred  by  the  Constitution 
upon  the  federal  government,  or  not  expressly 
denied  by  the  Constitution  to  the  states. 
That  there  might  be  no  doubt  about  the 
matter,  this  principle  was  formulated  and 
adopted  as  the  Tenth  Amendment  to  the  Con- 
stitution in  the  following  terms :  "  The  powers 
not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the  Consti- 
tution, nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  re- 
served to  the  States  respectively,  or  to  the  people!" 
If  this  principle  is  once  thoroughly  under- 
stood the  distribution  of  powers  in  the  Amer- 
ican political  system,  which  sometimes  seem 
so  complex  to  foreigners,  will  present  no  great 
difficulty.  There  are  the  state  governments, 
each  having  jurisdiction  within  its  own  terri- 
tory, and  there  is  the  federal  government  at 
Washington  having  jurisdiction  over  the  whole 
territory  of  the  United  States.  The  federal 
government  exercises  such  powers  only  as  are 
expressly  conferred  upon  it  by  the  Constitu- 
tion ;  the  state  governments  exercise  all  powers 
not  expressly  denied  to  them  or  expressly 
conferred  upon  the  federal  government. 

The  federal  government,  upon  which  the 
Constitution  conferred  certain  powers,  is  in 

76 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

its  structure  similar  to  the  state  governments. 
It  is  a  government  of  three  branches — execu- 
tive, legislative,  and  judicial — intended  to  be 
so  nicely  checked  and  balanced,  in  respect 
to  the  powers  conferred  upon  each  branch, 
that  no  one  branch  could  usurp  the  powers 
conferred  upon  either  of  the  others.  The 
executive  branch  is  intrusted  to  the  President, 
originally  elected  by  an  electoral  college,  but 
now  in  fact  elected  directly  by  the  people, 
for  a  term  of  four  years.  Aside  from  a  limited 
right  of  vetoing  laws  passed  by  Congress, 
the  chief  function  of  the  President  is  to  "take 
care  that  the  laws  be  faithfully  executed."  In 
order  that  he  may  do  this,  he  is  made  the 
commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy, 
and  is  given  the  power  to  appoint  ambassa- 
dors, judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  all 
federal  officers  whose  appointment  is  not  other- 
wise provided  for.  In  addition,  the  President 
negotiates  all  treaties  with  foreign  powers; 
but  both  the  treaties  negotiated  and  the  ap- 
pointments made  by  the  President  become 
valid  only  when  approved  by  a  two-thirds 
vote  of  the  Senate. 

The  legislative  branch  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment consists  of  the  Congress,  composed  of 
an  upper  house  called  the  Senate,  and  a  lower 
house  called  the  House  of  Representatives. 
The  Senate  is  composed  of  two  members  from 

77 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

each  state,  whether  large  or  small,  chosen 
originally  by  the  state  legislatures,  but  now 
in  all  states  by  the  people,  for  a  term  of  six 
years.  The  Senate  was  a  concession  to  the 
small  states,  which  wished  to  preserve  their 
equality  with  the  large  states,  so  that  even 
to-day  a  state  like  Rhode  Island,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  about  six  hundred  and  fifty  thousand, 
has  equal  weight  in  the  Senate  with  a  state 
like  New  York,  with  a  population  of  over  ten 
millions.  But  the  Senate  was  also  a  conces- 
sion to  those  who  feared  the  unchecked  power 
of  the  people.  Chosen  by  the  state  legislatures, 
for  a  long  term  of  service,  and  made  up  pre- 
sumably of  older  men,  the  Senate  was  de- 
signed to  prevent  over-hasty  action  by  the 
House  of  Representatives. 

The  House  of  Representatives  is  composed 
of  men  chosen  directly  by  the  people  for  a 
term  of  two  years.  The  number  from  each 
state  is  determined  according  to  the  popu- 
lation of  the  state,  and  in  each  state  every 
one  has  a  right  to  vote  for  members  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  who  has  a  right  to 
vote  for  the  members  of  the  lower  house  of 
the  legislature  of  that  state.  The  House  of 
Representatives  was  thus  a  concession  to  the 
large  states ;  but  it  was  also  a  concession  to  the 
principle  of  democracy.  It  was  and  is  as 
democratic  a  body  as  the  states  respectively 

78 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

wish  to  make  it.  In  Kansas,  for  example, 
where  women  are  allowed  to  vote  for  members 
of  the  state  legislature,  women  may  vote  for 
members  of  the  House  of  Representatives; 
but  in  Pennsylvania,  where  women  are  not 
allowed  to  vote  in  state  elections,  they  may 
not  vote  for  United  States  Congressmen, 
either. 

The  third  branch  of  the  federal  government 
is  the  judicial  branch,  "which  is  vested  in  one 
Supreme  Court  and  in  such  inferior  courts  as 
Congress  may  from  time  to  time  ordain  and 
establish,"  The  Congress  has  in  fact  estab- 
lished a  number  of  such  inferior  courts,  the 
most  important  of  which  are  the  circuit  and 
the  district  courts.  There  is  at  least  one 
district  court  of  the  United  States  in  each 
state,  and  in  the  more  populous  states  there 
are  sometimes  three,  or  even  four,  and  the 
districts  are  themselves  grouped  in  nine  judi- 
cial circuits  in  which  the  judges  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  from  time  to  time  hold  courts  for 
the  hearing  of  appeals  from  the  district 
courts.  These  federal  courts,  which  are  of 
course  quite  distinct  in  jurisdiction  and  in 
personnel  from  the  state  courts,  thus  consti- 
tute a  kind  of  judicial  hierarchy,  with  the 
district  courts  at  the  bottom,  above  them 
the  circuit  courts,  and  above  the  circuit 
courts  the  Supreme  Court.  The  jurisdiction 

79 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  the  federal  courts  extends  to  "all  cases  .  .  . 
arising  under  the  Constitution,  the  laws  of 
the  United  States,  and  treaties  made,  or  which 
shall  be  made,  under  their  authority/' 

Such  is  the  form  of  the  federal  government 
upon  which  the  Constitution  expressly  con- 
fers certain  powers.  Aside  from  the  power 
of  the  President  to  negotiate  treaties,  the 
powers  which  the  Constitution  confers  upon 
the  federal  government  are  essentially  all  con- 
tained in  Section  VIII,  which  defines  the  legis- 
lative authority  of  the  federal  Congress.  This 
section  is  of  sufficient  importance  to  quote 
at  length: 

The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  lay  and  collect 
taxes,  duties,  imposts,  and  excises,  to  pay  the  debts 
and  provide  for  the  common  defense  and  general  wel- 
fare of  the  United  States;  but  all  duties,  imposts,  and 
excises  shall  be  uniform  throughout  the  United  States. 

To  borrow  money  on  the  credit  of  the  United  States. 

To  regulate  commerce  with  foreign  nations,  among 
the  several  States,  and  with  the  Indian  Tribes. 

To  establish  an  uniform  rule  of  naturalization,  and 
uniform  laws  on  the  subject  of  bankruptcy  through- 
out the  States. 

To  coin  money,  regulate  the  value  thereof,  and  of 
foreign  coin,  and  fix  the  standard  of  weights  and 
measures 

To  provide  for  the  punishment  of  counterfeiting  the 
securities  and  current  coin  of  the  United  States. 

To  establish  post  offices  and  post  roads. 

To  promote  the  progress  of  science  and  the  useful 
80 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

arts,  by  securing  for  limited  times  to  authors  and  in- 
ventors the  exclusive  right  to  their  respective  writings 
and  discoveries. 

To  constitute  tribunals  inferior  to  the  Supreme 
Court. 

To  define  and  punish  piracies  and  felonies  committed 
on  the  high  seas,  and  offenses  against  the  law  of  nations. 

To  declare  war,  grant  letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal, 
to  make  rules  concerning  captures  on  land  and  water. 

To  raise  and  support  armies,  but  no  appropriation 
of  money  to  that  use  shall  be  for  a  longer  term  than 
two  years. 

To  provide  and  maintain  a  navy. 

To  make  rules  and  regulations  for  the  government 
and  regulation  of  the  land  and  naval  forces. 

To  provide  for  calling  forth  the  militia  to  execute 
the  laws  of  the  Union,  suppress  insurrection  and  repel 
invasion,  .  .  .  and 

To  make  all  laws  which  shall  be  necessary  and  proper 
for  carrying  into  execution  the  foregoing  powers,  and  all 
the  other  powers  vested  by  this  Constitution  in  the 
Government  of  the  United  States,  or  any  department 
or  officer  thereof. 

Such  are  the  powers  expressly  conferred 
upon  the  United  States  government  by  the 
Constitution.  The  powers  expressly  denied 
to  the  states  are  to  make  treaties  with  one 
another  or  with  foreign  states,  to  coin  money 
or  issue  bills  of  credit,  pass  bills  of  attainder, 
ex  post  facto  laws,  or  laws  impairing  the  ob- 
ligation of  a  contract,  to  levy  import  or  export 
duties,  to  keep  ships  of  war  in  time  of  peace, 
or  to  grant  titles  of  nobility. 

81 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

It  was  of  course  very  easy  to  say  that  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  should  pass 
only  such  and  such  laws.  But  suppose  the 
Congress  should  not  observe  the  limits  set 
in  the  Constitution?  Who  would  restrain  it? 
It  was  easy  to  say  that  the  states  should  not 
pass  such  and  such  laws — for  example,  a  law 
impairing  the  obligation  of  a  contract.  But 
suppose  some  state  should  pass  a  law  im- 
pairing the  obligation  of  a  contract?  Who 
would  restrain  it?  Where  virtually  sovereign 
powers  are  divided  between  two  distinct  gov- 
ernments, conflict  is  sure  to  arise.  The  dis- 
tribution of  powers  between  the  states  and  the 
federal  government  is  an  essential  feature  of 
the  American  federal  system,  and  conflicts 
have  often  arisen  between  the  states  and  the 
federal  government  in  respect  to  their  proper 
sphere  of  activities.  Some  method  of  de- 
termining these  questions  without  resorting 
to  war  was  therefore  necessary. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  fell  to  the  Supreme 
Court  to  decide  these  disputed  questions.  If 
the  Congress  passes  a  law,  or  if  any  state  legis- 
lature passes  a  law,  in  either  case  any  one  may 
refuse  to  obey  the  law;  and  if  he  is  arrested 
in  consequence  and  brought  to  trial,  he  may 
plead  that  the  law  in  question  is  unconstitu- 
tional— that  is,  that  the  Congress  or  the  state 
legislature  is  forbidden  by  the  Constitution 

82 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

of  the  United  States  to  pass  such  a  law.  Such 
a  plea,  if  it  is  allowed,  brings  the  case  before 
a  federal  court,  and  may  ultimately  bring  it 
before  the  Supreme  Court,  because  the  juris- 
diction of  the  federal  court  extends  to  "all 
cases  arising  under  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States";  and  it  then  becomes  the 
duty  of  the  court,  if  the  case  cannot  be  de- 
cided on  some  other  ground,  to  raise  and  to 
"decide  the  question  of  the  constitutionality  of 
the  law  in  question.  Acting  in  this  way,  the 
Supreme  Court  has  often  declared  laws  of 
Congress  null  and  void  on  the  ground  that 
the  Congress  has  exceeded  the  powers  given 
to  it  by  the  Constitution;  and  it  has  still 
more  frequently  declared  state  laws  null  and 
void  on  the  ground  that  the  state  is  exercising 
powers  denied  to  it  by  the  Constitution.  Thus 
the  Supreme  Court  is  not  only  a  strictly  judi- 
cial body;  it  is  also  a  kind  of  umpire  or  arbi- 
trator which  settles  disputes  in  respect  to  the 
respective  powers  of  the  federal  and  state 
governments.  In  settling  such  disputes,  it 
often  has  to  declare  what  is  or  is  not  law,  and 
so  it  becomes  in  fact  a  lawmaking  body  as 
well  as  a  law-interpreting  body. 

Such  in  brief  outline  is  the  framework  or 
structure  of  the  American  political  system. 
It  must  be  confessed  that  it  is  not  simple. 
The  principle  for  determining  the  distribution 

83 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  power  between  the  various  governments 
may  be  clear  enough,  but  the  machinery  itself 
is  complicated,  and  there  is  a  great  deal  of  it. 
The  number  of  elections  to  be  held,  of  offices 
to  be  filled,  of  legislative  bodies  to  be  kept 
going,  is  something  wonderful.  Consider  the 
lawmaking  bodies  alone!  To  say  nothing  of 
county  and  municipal  governments  through- 
out the  Union,  there  is  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  assembling  every  year,  and 
forty-eight  state  legislatures  assembling  at 
least  once  in  two  years,  to  make  more  laws. 
A  more  extensive  plant  than  we  have  in 
America  for  the  manufacture  of  statutes  does 
not  exist  on  the  earth.  Every  year  thousands 
of  new  laws,  state  and  national,  are  made- 
very  soon  forgotten,  most  of  them,  it  is  true, 
and  most  of  them  useless.  But  then  most  of 
them  are  harmless  also,  because  most  statutes 
become  obsolete  unless  the  people  are  inter- 
ested in  their  enforcement,  since  no  one  in 
America  imagines  that  laws  can  have  any 
force  if  they  are  not  an  expression  of  the 
public  will. 

IV 

In  America  the  enforcement  of  law  as  well 
as  the  making  of  law  rests  with  the  people; 
but  the  will  of  the  people  is  not  quite  the  same 
thing  in  both  cases.  Laws  that  are  made  are 

84 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

the  expression  of  the  popular  will  in  the  sense 
that  all  statutes  are  formulated  and  passed, 
and  all  executive  decrees  are  issued,  by  assem- 
blies elected  by  the  people,  or  by  officials  ap- 
pointed by  some  one  who  is  himself  elected 
by  the  people.  But  who  are  the  people? 
And  do  the  legislative  bodies  and  executive 
officials  always  represent  the  wishes  of  the 
people  ? 

The  people,  so  far  as  the  making  of  laws  is 
concerned,  have  never  been  in  America,  or 
in  any  other  country,  composed  of  all  the 
citizens.  The  right  of  voting  for  legislative 
bodies  and  officials  has  always  been  limited 
to  certain  persons.  Nor  has  this  limited  class 
of  persons,  this  "electorate,"  ever  been  able 
to  express  its  will  perfectly,  or  to  get  it  per- 
fectly represented  in  government.  No  form 
of  government  works  perfectly.  Democratic 
government  does  not  work  perfectly;  and 
democratic  government  in  the  United  States 
is  no  exception  to  this  rule.  But  the  validity 
of  the  principle  upon  which  the  political  system 
of  the  United  States  rests  has  in  this  country 
never  been  seriously  questioned.  When  the 
American  sees  that  his  system  of  government 
works  badly,  he  does  not  deny  his  faith  and 
fall  into  despair.  He  says,  cheerfully,  "We 
must  set  this  right ;  we  must  have  more  laws ; 
we  must  amend  the  Constitution."  The  aver- 

85 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

age  American  never  doubts  that  the  remedy 
for  democracy  is  more  democracy. 

The  whole  history  of  the  United  States  has 
been  a  process  of  trying  to  get  more  democ- 
racy. In  1789  every  state  restricted  the  right 
of  voting  more  or  less  narrowly.  At  that  time 
it  was  generally  thought  that  to  place  the 
control  of  government  unreservedly  in  the 
hands  of  even  a  minority  of  the  people  was 
to  have  a  great  deal  of  democracy.  It  was 
thought  that  only  those  who  had  property  to 
protect  would  have  a  sufficiently  intelligent 
interest  in  government  to  be  intrusted  with 
political  power;  only  those  who  had  a  "stake 
in  the  country"  ought  to  have  a  share  in 
saying  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  country. 
As  John  Jay  was  fond  of  saying,  "Those  who 
own  the  country  ought  to  govern  it." 

But  even  at  that  time  there  were  those 
who  had  more  interest  in  men  than  they  had 
in  money,  and  more  faith  in  the  virtue  of  the 
people  than  they  had  in  the  virtue  of  wealth. 
Thomas  Jefferson,  the  author  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  was  one  of  those  who 
never  lost  faith  in  the  principles  of  that  docu- 
ment;  and  he  became  the  leader  of  the  Demo- 
cratic -  Republican  party,  which  forthwith 
raised  the  cry  of  "aristocracy"  and  "oli- 
garchy" against  the  Federalist  party,  which 

was  supported  mainly  by  the  wealthy  and  edu- 

86 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

cated  classes.  But  although  Jefferson  and  his 
party  came  into  power  in  1801,  it  was  not  until 
the  period  of  1820-30,  when  the  more  demo- 
cratic frontier  states  of  the  Middle  West  began 
to  exercise  a  determining  influence  upon  the 
political  history  of  the  United  States,  that  the 
old  restrictions  on  the  suffrage  began  to  be 
abolished.  This  great  democratic  movement 
culminated  in  the  election  of  Andrew  Jackson 
(1828-37)  as  President.  A  frontier  Indian- 
fighter,  "Old  Hickory''  was  a  man  of  the 
people  with  a  profound  faith  in  the  worth,  the 
integrity,  and  the  sound  sense  of  the  average 
man.  From  this  period  universal  manhood 
suffrage  became  the  general  practice  in  the 
United  States,  and  political  control  passed  in 
considerable  measure  from  the  cultiired  and 
educated  classes  to  the  mass  of  the  jibpple. 

But  universal  manhood  suffrage  Drought 
its  evils  and  its  problems.  As  the  electorate 
became  larger,  the  nomination  of  candidates 
for  office  was  taken  out  of  the  hands  of 
prominent  officials  and  placed  in  the  hands  of 
mass-meetings,  which  in  turn  developed  into 
"nominating  conventions"  made  of  delegates 
elected  by  the  members  of  the  party  con- 
cerned. The  nomination  convention  offered 
an  excellent  opportunity  for  the  professional 
politician  to  construct  a  closely  integrated 
"political  machine,"  which  manipulated  the 
7  87 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

nomination  of  candidates  and  controlled  the 
party  through  the  spoils  of  office  and  through 
the  relations  it  might  establish  with  business 
or  other  "interests"  seeking  protection  or  ad- 
vantage. It  thus  came  about  that  the  hon- 
est voter  had  usually  only  a  choice  between 
two  candidates,  which  was  often  a  choice  be- 
tween two  evils.  Each  candidate  was  nomi- 
nated in  a  more  or  less  secret  and  corrupt  way, 
so  that  whichever  candidate  was  elected  to 
office  was  likely  to  have  "obligations"  to 
those  who  had  procured  his  nomination  and 
his  election.  These  "obligations"  were  not 
so  much  to  the  people  as  to  individuals  or 
groups  of  individuals  who  had  axes  of  their 
own  to  grind. 

This  system  of  corrupt  "machine  politics" 
at  last  became  so  perfect  in  its  kind  that 
even  the  easy-going  Americans  could  not 
tolerate  it,  and  in  recent  years  the  nominating 
convention  has  been  rapidly  modified  or  abol- 
ished altogether.  Many  states  now  have  what 
are  called  "primary  elections "- —that  is,  elec- 
tions within  each  party,  or  without  regard  to 
party,  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  candi- 
dates to  stand  for  the  final  election.  By  this 
system  all  voters,  or  at  least  all  voters  who 
are  registered  as  members  of  a  recognized 
party,  may  take  part  in  nominating  the  candi- 
dates who  are  to  be  finally  voted  for.  To  some 

88 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

extent  this  has  diminished  the  influence  of  the 
professional  politician  by  enabling  the  rank  and 
file  to  choose  men  for  office  who  will  be  more 
free  to  carry  out  their  wishes. 

But  it  is  of  course  still  possible  that  the 
elected  representatives  may  not  carry  out  the 
wishes  of  the  people.  Municipal  councilors, 
state  assemblymen,  members  of  the  House  of 
Representatives,  even  United  States  Sena- 
tors, are  not  demigods,  but  more  or  less 
ordinary  human  beings.  They  have  their 
political  careers  to  consider,  often  place  loyalty 
to  party  above  loyalty  to  ideas  even  if  they 
have  any,  or  to  the  welfare  of  the  people  even 
if  by  chance  they  know  what  it  is.  Conscious- 
ly or  not,  they  are  often  the  instruments  of 
malign  influences — selfish  or  corrupt  or  vicious 
organizations  that  prey  upon  society  and  ex- 
ploit the  people.  Thus  it  happens  that  the 
laws  passed  by  the  representatives  of  the 
people,  even  when  these  representatives  are 
men  whom  the  people  choose  willingly,  are 
often  not  such  as  the  people  desire. 

To  correct  this  evil  by  bringing  the  action 
of  elected  representatives  more  directly  under 
popular  control  even  during  their  terms  of 
office,  there  has  been  under  way  for  many 
years  a  movement  which  is  symbolized  by 
the  letters  I.  R.  R. — the  Initiative,  the  Refer- 
endum, and  the  Recall.  The  Initiative  (which 

89 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

is  at  least  as  old  as  the  French  Revolution)  is 
a  scheme  which  permits  a  certain  proportion 
of  the  voters  to  initiate  legislation — that  is, 
to  formulate  and  propose  bills  which  the 
legislature  must  consider  and  vote  upon.  The 
Referendum  is  a  scheme  which  requires  cer- 
tain bills  or  laws  passed  by  the  legislature  to 
be  referred  to  the  voters  for  approval  or  re- 
jection. The  Recall  is  a  method  of  permitting 
the  voters  to  "  recall " — that  is,  to  remove 
from  office — an  elected  official  before  the  term 
of  his  office  expires,  in  case  he  acts  contrary 
to  their  wishes.  These  methods,  which  have 
been  adopted  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  in  a 
number  of  states,  are  all  designed  to  give 
to  the  people  a  more  direct  and  a  more  effec- 
tive control  of  legislation,  and  of  the  con- 
duct of  elected  representatives.  Their  effect 
is  in  some  measure  to  transform  elected 
officials  from  representatives  to  agents  of  the 
people. 

Meantime,  the  trend  toward  a  greater  de- 
gree of  democracy  has  taken  the  form  of  an 
extension  of  the  suffrage.  Many  people  have 
always  regarded  women  as  reasonably  honest 
and  intelligent — at  least,  as  much  so  as  men; 
and  for  a  long  time  these  people  have  been 
asking  a  very  embarrassing  question.  If  it  is 
true,  they  say,  that  "all  just  government  rests 
upon  the  consent  of  the  governed/5  why  should 

90 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

women,  who  have  as  well  as  men  to  submit  to 
government,  not  be  allowed  to  consent  to  it 
also.  No  convincing  reason  for  not  allowing 
women  to  vote  has  ever  been  advanced  which 
would  not  apply  equally  well  to  men.  But  it 
takes  a  great  deal  of  reason  to  overcome  the 
force  of  a  little  inertia ;  and  it  is  only  in  recent 
years,  when  the  economic  and  intellectual 
emancipation  of  women  has  somewhat  broken 
down  the  solidarity  of  the  family,  that  the 
political  emancipation  of  women  has  made 
much  headway.  At  the  present  time  women 
have  full  or  partial  rights  of  voting  in  seven- 
teen states.1  Above  all,  the  Great  War,  with 
the  stimulation  of  democratic  ideals  which  has 
come  out  of  it,  has.  given  a  great  impetus  to 
the  woman's  suffrage  movement  in  this  coun- 
try. There  is  now  a  joint  resolution  before 
the  Congress  of  the  United  States  proposing 
an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  which,  if 
adopted,  will  give  to  women  throughout  the 
United  States  the  same  rights  of  voting  as 
men.  The  resolution  has  been  passed  by  the 
House  of  Representatives,  and,  although  re- 
cently rejected  by  the  Senate,  there  seems 
little  doubt  that  it  will  ultimately  be  carried 
into  effect.  If  this  should  come  to  pass,  the 
political  system  of  the  United  States,  so  far 
as  the  right  of  the  people  to  share  in  the 

October,  1918. 
91 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

election  of  those  who  exercise  governmental 
power  is  concerned,  will  be  as  democratic  as 
it  could  well  be. 


Americans  do  not  as  a  rule  follow  closely 
the  work  of  their  various  legislatures,  or  take 
much  interest  in  the  great  majority  of  the 
laws  they  make.  In  a  single  session  of  almost 
any  state  legislature  a  thousand  or  more  bills 
are  introduced.  Most  of  these  are  happily 
never  enacted  into  law;  but  very  few  people 
indeed  ever  hear  of  the  majority  of  those  that 
are  enacted  into  law.  Only  in  those  laws 
which  are  the  result  of  wide-spread  interest 
and  of  much  discussion  in  the  newspapers  do 
the  people  take  any  interest ;  and  on  the  other 
hand,  aside  from  a  few  very  special  laws,  those 
laws  in  which  the  people  are  not  interested 
cannot  long  be  enforced.  In  other  words,  the 
right  to  vote  for  representatives  is  only  one 
method  of  expressing  the  popular  will ;  a  less 
tangible  but  a  much  more  effective  way  is 
through  the  force  of  public  opinion.  Public 
opinion,  when  it  is  once  definitely  crystallized, 
can  easily  force  legislatures  to  make  the  laws 
that  are  desired,  and  it  can  with  equal  ease 
compel  officials  to  enforce  or  to  ignore  any 
law  after  it  has  once  been  made.  In  the 

92 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

United  States  there  is  no  power  that  can  long 
resist  a  consolidated  public  opinion. 

But  what  is  public  opinion?  There  are  of 
course  many  public  opinions.  Wherever  you 
have  a  group  of  people  who  think  alike  in 
respect  to  any  matter,  there  you  have,  for 
that  group  and  in  respect  to  that  matter,  a 
public  opinion.  In  respect  to  many  things, 
there  is  a  public  opinion  of  the  village  which 
is  different  from  the  public  opinion  of  the  city, 
a  public  opinion  of  the  city  which  is  different 
from  the  public  opinion  of  the  state,  a  public 
opinion  of  the  state  which  is  different  from 
the  public  opinion  of  the  nation.  Again,  in 
any  territorial  area,  public  opinion  may  differ 
from  class  to  class  and  from  group  to  group. 
There  is  what  may  be  called  the  public  opinion 
of  the  Democrats  as  opposed  (it  must  be  op- 
posed) to  that  of  the  Republicans,  the  public 
opinion  of  the  laboring  class  as  opposed  to  the 
public  opinion  of  the  capitalists,  the  public 
opinion  of  the  Brewers'  Association  as  op- 
posed to  the  public  opinion  of  the  Women's 
Christian  Temperance  Union. 

Over  large  areas  these  various  group  opin- 
ions often  neutralize  one  another  so  effectively 
that  the  practical  result  is  nil;  and  it  is  ob- 
vious that  the  larger  the  area  and  the  more 
diverse  the  groups  concerned  the  more  difficult 
it  is  ever  to  get  a  thoroughly  consolidated 

93 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

public  opinion  in  essential  questions  of  politics 
and  society.  This  difficulty  depends  not  only 
upon  the  size  of  the  territory  concerned,  but 
also  upon  the  extent  to  which  there  is  present 
vital  differences  in  respect  to  race,  cultural 
habit,  or  economic  conditions.  Kansas  is 
almost  entirely  an  agricultural  state  in  which 
there  are  not  many  very  poor  or  very  rich 
people,  no  large  cities,  and  few  foreign-born 
citizens.  It  is  therefore  much  easier  for  the 
people  of  Kansas  to  agree  in  respect  to  most 
questions  of  politics  than  it  is  for  the  people 
of  New  York  State  to  agree  in  respect  to  simi- 
lar questions.  For  example,  there  is  a  con- 
solidated public  opinion  in  Kansas,  and  has 
been  for  a  long  time,  on  the  subject  of  pro- 
hibition; there  is  no  such  consolidated  public 
opinion  on  this  subject  in  the  state  of  New 
York,  where  there  is  so  little  uniformity  in  re- 
spect to  the  racial  origins  of  the  people  and  in 
the  economic  conditions  under  which  they  live. 
It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  the  larger  a 
country  is,  and  the  more  deep-seated  the  dif- 
ferences are  between  section  and  section,  or 
between  the  different  groups  and  classes,  the 
more  difficult  it  will  be  to  have  a  consolidated 
public  opinion  on  most  questions  of  im- 
portance. Now  the  United  States  is  a  very 
large  country,  with  well-marked  geographical 
areas  differing  in  climate,  soil,  economic  con- 

94 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ditions,  and  in  the  characteristics  of  the  people. 
The  Alleghany  and  the  Rocky  Mountain 
ranges  divide  the  country  into  the  East  and 
the  Middle  West  and  the  Far  West ;  climate 
and  historical  memories  combine  to  differenti- 
ate the  North  from  the  South.  The  people  of 
the  United  States  are  of  cosmopolitan  origin. 
For  a  century  a  constant  stream  of  foreign 
immigrants  has  been  pouring  into  the  country, 
and  to-day  about  one-third  of  the  people  are, 
at  least  on  one  side,  of  foreign-born  parentage. 
To-day  it  is  very  difficult  to  say  what  is  a 
"typical"  American  name  or  a  "typical" 
American  face.  One  is  reminded  of  the  story 
of  the  corporal  who  at  first  had  difficulty  in 
calling  the  roll  of  his  company,  on  account  of 
the  great  number  of  strange  Polish  and  Italian 
names;  but  at  last  he  came  to  the  name  of 
O'Shaughnessey,  and  was  heard  to  mutter 
under  his  breath,  "Thank  God  for  one  of  those 
good  old  American  names."  Almost  any  name 
is  now  a  good  American  name.  But  besides  its 
geographical  and  racial  diversity,  America  is 
rapidly  becoming  an  industrialized  country, 
wealth  is  being  rapidly  concentrated  in  the 
hands  of  the  few,  and  as  a  result  there  is  de- 
veloping, in  certain  sections  especially,  a 
marked  divergence  of  interests  and  ideas  be- 
tween the  capitalist  and  the  laboring  classes. 
In  America,  therefore,  the  problem  of  recon- 

95 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

ciling  sectional  differences,  of  Americanizing 
the  mass  of  foreign  immigrants,  of  composing 
the  different  interests  of  labor  and  capital— 
in  a  word,  the  problem  of  creating  a  consoli- 
dated public  opinion  is  a  difficult  one. 

If,  under  these  conditions,  the  American 
system  of  democratic  government  works  fairly 
well,  it  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  fed- 
eral system,  with  its  elaborate  scheme  of 
checks  and  balances,  is  well  suited  to  a  large 
country  with  a  great  diversity  of  conditions. 
The  federal  system  is  complicated,  and  it 
works  slowly,  but  it  has  this  supreme  merit, 
that  it  does  not  confer  too  much  authority  in 
any  one  government,  that  it  allows  a  great  deal 
of  leeway  for  political  experimentation  in  re- 
stricted areas  in  conformity  with  the  crystal- 
lization of  public  opinion  in  those  areas.  The 
federal  system  does  not  require  the  people  of 
the  whole  United  States  to  form  a  consolidated 
public  opinion  on  every  important  social  or 
political  question,  but  only  upon  those  ques- 
tions in  respect  to  which  it  is  essential  that  the 
nation  should  act  as  a  unit.  This  is  only  a  way 
of  saying  that  the  federal  system  allows  a  great 
deal  of  liberty  in  local  government — it  allows 
the  people  of  a  state,  or  the  people  of  a  city  or 
county,  a  good  deal  of  liberty  todoas  they  please. 

It  is  said  that  on  one  occasion  the  French 
Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  taking  out  his 

96 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

watch,  told  his  English  visitor  that  at  that 
moment  all  the  children  of  France  of  a  cer- 
tain age  would  normally  be  studying  the  same 
subject  out  of  the  same  text-book.  This  could 
ihappen  only  in  a  country  in  which  a  great 
(majority  of  the  people  were  pretty  well  agreed 
jas  to  what  children  of  a  certain  age  ought  to 
;be  doing  at  a  given  hour  of  the  day.  No  such 
agreement  exists  in  the  United  States.  Every 
ione  is  agreed  that  education  is  a  good  thing, 
i  that  there  ought  to  be  more  of  it,  and  that  it 
'ought  to  be  better  than  it  is.  But  there  is  the 
greatest  diversity  of  opinion,  which  seems  to 
fluctuate  from  day  to  day,  as  to  what  kind  of 
education  is  best;  and  it  would  therefore  be 
thought  intolerable  that  the  United  States 
government  should  regulate  these  matters  in 
a  uniform  way  for  the  whole  country.  This 
is  a  matter  for  the  state  of  the  locality  to 
determine.  If  the  people  of  Iowa  feel  very 
strongly  that  a  knowledge  of  Greek  is  useless 
in  a  farming  community,  the  state  of  Iowa 
has  only  to  abolish  the  teaching  of  Greek  from 
the  schools  of  Iowa.  If  the  people  of  Gary, 
which  is  a  highly  industrialized  city,  wish  to 
try  a  radical  experiment  in  industrial  edu- 
cation, why  should  they  not  do  so?  It  may 
turn  out  well,  in  which  case  other  cities  can 
adopt  it;  or  it  may  turn  out  ill,  in  which  case 
other  cities  may  profit  by  the  example,  while 

97 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Gary  itself  can  at  any  time  return  to  normal 
ways.  And  so  it  is  in  respect  to  a  hundred 
questions  of  government  and  politics ;  in  re- 
spect to  woman's  suffrage,  prohibition,1  the  re- 
gulation of  corporations,  divorce,  city  govern- 
ment, municipal  ownership  of  street  railways, 
water-works,  and  other  public  utilities — in  re- 
spect to  all  such  matters  particular  states  and 
local  communities  are  constantly  engaged  in 
political  and  social  experimentation,  are  con- 
stantly solving  their  own  problems  according  to 
the  pressure  of  local  or  regional  public  opinion. 
Where  there  is  so  much  leeway  for  the  states 
and  localities  to  manage  their  own  affairs, 
it  is  only  in  matters  in  respect  to  which  the 
whole  nation  has  to  act  as  a  unit  that  the 
people  have  to  form  a  national  opinion;  and 
this  is  a  good  thing,  for  it  takes  the  nation  a 
long  time  to  make  up  its  mind.  It  took  the 
nation  a  long  time  to  make  up  its  mind  in 
respect  to  the  Great  War.  Many  people  got 
impatient  with  the  government  because  it  did 
not  declare  war  sooner.  But  the  government, 
in  a  country  where  public  opinion  is  the  ruling 
power,  could  not  possibly  take  such  a  mo- 
mentous step  until  the  people  were  ready  for 
it,  until  a  fairly  consolidated  public  opinion 
had  been  formed;  and  under  all  the  circum- 
stances, the  wonder  is,  not  that  the  nation 

1  This  is  no  longer  true  of  Prohibition. 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

took  so  long  to  make  up  its  mind,  but  that  it 
made  it  up  as  quickly  and,  on  the  whole,  as 
decisively  as  it  did. 

The  federal  system,  with  its  checks  and 
balances,  although  it  often  seems  rather  slow 
and  clumsy,  is  nevertheless  pretty  well  adapted 
to  this  large  and  diverse  country  in  which  the 
formation  of  a  national  opinion  is  a  slow  and  j 
often  a  clumsy  process.  It  is  often  said  that 
the  government  of  Great  Britain  responds 
much  more  quickly  to  the  pressure  of  public 
opinion  than  the  government  of  the  United 
States  does.  This  is  perhaps  true,  but  it  is 
not  so  true  as  it  seems  to  be.  What  seems  to 
be  a  more  ready  response  to  public  opinion/ 
is  often  only  a  more  rapid  formation  of  public, 
opinion  itself.  England  is  a  small  country— 
about  the  size  of  the  state  of  Kansas.  The 
political  and  industrial  and  intellectual  life 
of  the  nation  centers  in  London,  where  the 
government  sits.  The  whole  country  reads 
the  same  papers — the  London  papers — on  the 
same  day  they  are  printed ;  discusses  the  same 
events,  the  same  men,  the  same  measures,  the 
same  speeches,  the  same  scandals.  Nothing 
like  this  happens,  or  can  happen,  in  the  United 
States.  Strictly  speaking,  the  United  States 
has  no  capital,  no  dominating  center  of  in- 
dustrial, political,  or  intellectual  life.  Par- 
ticularly, there  is  no  center  of  intellectual  life. 

99 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  last  place  to  go  to  find  out  what  the  people 
are  thinking  about  is  Washington,  as  President 
Wilson  himself  has  found  out ;  and  it  is  easier 
to  predict  the  result  of  a  general  election  in 
Kansas  City  than  in  New  York.  East  of  the 
Alleghany  Mountains  the  people  read  the 
New  York,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  or  the  Wash- 
ington papers,  and  they  never  see  any  other. 
In  the  Middle  West  the  people  read  the  Chi- 
cago, Minneapolis,  St.  Louis,  or  Kansas  City 
papers.  They  can't  get  the  New  York  papers 
until  the  day  after  they  are  printed,  and  no 
one  likes  to  read  old  news.  If  you  go  still 
farther  west — to  Seattle,  Portland,  San  Fran- 
cisco— you  are  again  in  a  new  country,  where 
a  New  York  paper,  if  one  is  ever  seen,  is  four 
days  behind  the  times. 

Of  course  the  newspapers  all  carry  much 
the  same  press  matter;  and  events  of  world 
importance,  or  of  great  national  significance, 
are  similarly  presented,  and  read  on  the  same 
day,  the  country  over.  But  what  the  people 
think  about  these  events  in  any  particular 
section,  and  how  their  particular  interests  are 
involved — this  is  differently  reflected  in  the 
different  sections;  so  that  to  a  considerable 
extent  the  people  of  the  different  sections  read 
and  think  about  different  men  and  different 
events  and  different  issues.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances it  is  no  wonder  that  it  takes  a 

100 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

long  time  to  form  a  thoroughly  consolidated 
opinion  on  any  vital  matter. 

It  not  infrequently  happens  that  the  people 
elect  in  one  year  a  Republican  President  and 
a  Republican  majority  in  Congress,  but  two 
years  later,  in  the  congressional  elections, 
elect  enough  Democrats  to  place  the  Repub- 
licans in  a  minority  in  Congress.  The  result 
seems  an  absurd  one,  for  then  there  are  two 
parties,  with  different  ideas  and  policies,  in 
power,  one  in  control  of  the  executive  and 
another  in  control  of  the  legislative  branch 
of  the  government.  In  that  case  it  would 
seem  that  the  government  could  not  reflect 
the  will  of  the  people.  But  it  is  possible  that 
it  reflects  it  perfectly.  It  is  possible  that  the 
country  is  slowly  changing  its  mind,  that  it 
does  not  yet  know  certainly  what  it  wants. 
This  is  not  always  the  case,  but  it  is  often 
the  case;  and  when  it  is  the  case  the  dead- 
lock in  the  government  is  a  good  reflection  of 
the  popular  will,  or  lack  of  it.  At  least,  until 
it  is  certain  that  the  country  has  thoroughly 
made  up  its  mind  one  way  or  another,  it  is 
perhaps  not  a  bad  thing  for  the  government  to 
go  a  bit  slow. 

VI 

As  we  look  back  over  American  history,  it  is 
clear  that  there  has  been  an  ever-increasing 

101 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

number  of  questions  about  which  the  people, 
as  a  whole,  have  come  to  think  alike,  about 
which  a  consolidated  national  public  opinion 
has  been  formed;  and  in  proportion  as  this 
has  come  about  the  powers  of  the  federal 
government  have  increased  and  the  powers 
of  the  state  governments  have  diminished. 
Whenever  the  people  come  to  think  nationally 
about  any  question  they  usually  transfer  the 
control  of  that  question  to  the  national  govern- 
ment. The  result,  after  a  century  and  a  quar- 
ter, is  that  the  power  and  the  prestige  of  the 
federal  government  are  enormously  increased. 
If  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  could  come 
back  to  earth  and  see  what  the  federal  govern- 
ment is  doing  to-day,  they  would  all  agree 
that  this  monstrous  thing  was  no  child  of 
theirs;  for  to-day  the  federal  government 
exercises  as  a  matter  of  course  powers  which 
they  never  dreamed  of  giving  to  it.  This 
result  has  been  the  consequence  of  changing 
conditions  and  ideas;  it  is  the  result  of  an 
ever-increasing  nationalism,  a  constant  exten- 
sion of  the  sphere  of  social  and  political  ques- 
tions in  respect  to  which  there  is  a  consolidated 
national  public  opinion. 

But  since  we  have  a  written  constitution, 
and  the  powers  of  the  federal  and  state  gov- 
ernments are  defined  in  the  Constitution,  how 
does  the  federal  government  acquire  new 

IO2 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

power?  The  obvious  way  is,  of  course,  by 
changing  the  Constitution,  by  adopting 
amendments  to  it.  The  Constitution  can, 
however,  be  amended  only  when  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  the  Senate,  each  by  a 
two-thirds  vote,  proposes  such  an  amendment, 
and  when  this  proposed  amendment  is  ap- 
proved by  the  legislatures  of  three-fourths  of 
the  states.  This  would  seem  to  make  the 
amendment  of  the  Constitution  extremely 
difficult,  and,  in  fact,  until  recently  it  was  gen- 
erally supposed  it  would  require  something 
like  a  revolution,  something  like  the  Civil  War, 
to  get  the  Constitution  amended. 

There  is,  however,  another  way  in  which 
the  power  of  the  federal  government  has  been 
increased,  and  that  is  by  what  is  called  a 
"liberal  interpretation"  of  the  Constitution. 
As  has  been  seen,  it  falls  to  the  Supreme  Court 
to  determine  whether  a  statute  of  the  federal 
government  is  or  is  not  constitutional;  and  it 
is  obvious  that  the  power  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment can  be  restricted  or  extended  by  the 
simple  process  of  interpreting  the  terms  of  the 
Constitution  as  strictly  or  as  liberally  as  possi- 
ble. Some  of  the  terms  of  the  Constitution  are 
very  elastic  in  this  respect.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  after  defining  the  specific  powers  of 
Congress,  the  Constitution  says,  "And  to  make 
all  laws  which  may  be  necessary  and  proper  for 

8  103 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

carrying  into  execution  the  foregoing  powers." 
By  a  liberal  interpretation  of  this  clause  the 
powers  of  the  federal  government  have  been 
very  greatly  extended.  Through  legislative 
regulation,  for  example,  the  federal  govern- 
ment exercises  control  over  the  railroads  and 
other  corporations,  a  control  which  may  at  any 
time  easily  pass  into  public  ownership  of  these 
corporations;  and  it  has  this  power  because  it 
is  a  "necessary  and  proper"  power  for  carry- 
ing into  execution  the  harmless-looking  power 
"to  regulate  commerce  between  the  several 
states."  The  Constitution  is  so  elastic  that 
there  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  extension  of 
the  powers  of  the  federal  government  by 
means  of  judicial  interpretation;  the  only 
thing  necessary  is  to  have  a  national  public 
opinion  which  favors  the  extension.  As  we 
say  in  the  United  States,  "the  decisions  of  the 
Supreme  Court  follow  the  election  returns." 

But  there  are  some  powers  which  cannot 
be  read  into  the  Constitution,  which  can  be 
put  there  only  by  a  formal  amendment  of  the 
Constitution.  And  in  recent  years  it  has  be- 
come clear  that  the  formal  amendment  is  a 
less  difficult  matter  than  was  formerly  sup- 
posed. This  also  is  only  a  matter  of  getting 
a  sufficiently  consolidated  national  public 
opinion.  Such  an  opinion  in  America  is  likely 
i  to  come  gradually,  without  a  great  deal  of  dis- 

104 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

cussion  and  without  any  upheaval;  and  it 
is  brought  about  by  the  constant  social  ex- 
perimentation which  is  going  on  in  the  states 
and  local  communities  far  more  than  by  argu- 
ment and  discussion.  Americans  are  but  little  • 
inclined  to  take  up  with  ideas  or  theories 
simply  because  they  have  a  logical  consistency; 
but  on  the  other  hand  they  are  not  inclined 
to  hold  to  any  custom  merely  because  it  is 
old.  Their  aims  are  practical  and  their  meth- 
ods direct;  and  when  any  new  thing  is  pro- 
posed to  them  their  first  question  is,  "How 
will  it  work?"  You  may  say  that  it  is  only 
just  that  women  should  have  the  right  to 
vote,  or  you  may  say  that  to  refuse  women 
the  vote  is  inconsistent  with  the  principles 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence;  but  what 
nine  men  out  of  ten  will  ask  is:  "Why  do 
women  need  to  vote?  How  will  it  work  out 
in  practice?"  Now,  it  is  a  great  advantage  ; 
of  our  federal  system  that  it  admits  of  trying  '. 
out  this  new  idea  on  a  small  scale.  For  a  long 
time  we  have  been  experimenting  with  wom- 
an's suffrage,  first  in  municipal  elections,  then 
in  one  state  after  another.  The  average 
American  has  accordingly  not  argued  much 
about  woman's  suffrage;  he  has  watched  it 
work  in  one  state  after  another;  and  as  it 
seems  to  work  well  enough,  and  nothing  seri- 
ous happens  where  it  is  tried,  the  average 

105 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

American  finds  himself  in  favor  of  woman's 
suffrage  without  really  knowing  how.  The 
truth  is  that  he  has  simply  become  accustomed 
to  the  idea  of  it,  and  he  finds  himself  saying, 
"Well,  I  suppose  women  ought  to  have  a  right 
to  vote."  What  he  really  thinks  is :  "Woman's 
suffrage  seems  to  work  well  enough  where  it 
is  tried;  there  seems  to  be  no  harm  in  it. 
I  expect  it  is  bound  to  come." 

When  Americans  get  the  idea  that  a  thing 
is  "bound  to  come,"  the  battle  is  won. 
Women  will  soon  have  the  right  to  vote 
throughout  the  United  States  because  the 
opinion  that  "it  is  bound  to  come"  is  taking 
hold  of  the  country.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
prohibition  movement.  This  has  been  an 
issue  in  the  United  States  for  fifty  years; 
and  in  some  states  the  manufacture  and  sale 
of  alcoholic  liquors  have  been  prohibited  for 
a  generation.  The  movement  has  spread 
rapidly  in  recent  years,  until  now  over  half 
the  states  are  what  we  call  "dry"  states. 
The  war  has  in  the  mean  time  given  such  an 
impetus  to  the  movement  that  prohibition, 
like  woman's  suffrage,  is  coming  to  be  re- 
garded as  one  of  the  things  that  "are  bound 
to  come."  National  opinion  is  already  so 
far  crystallized  on  this  question  that  Con- 
gress has  voted  a  constitutional  amendment, 

.which  is  now  before  the  state  legislatures  for 

106 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ratification.  It  is  extremely  probable  that  it 
will  receive  the  approval  of  the  necessary 
three-fourths  of  the  states,  in  which  case  the 
power  of  the  states  to  regulate  the  manufac- 
ture and  sale  of  liquors  will  once  for  all 
cease.1 

It  all  comes  back  to  the  question  of  a  thor- 
oughly established  national  public  opinion. 
If  the  people  really  want  to  change  the  Con- 
stitution it  is  a  simple  matter  to  do  so.  The 
system  of  written  constitutional  guaranties 
prevents  hasty  action,  and  it'  preserves  a 
great  deal  of  local  liberty  as  long  as  there  is 
a  marked  divergence  of  interests  and  ideas 
throughout  the  country  in  respect  to  any 
question;  but  there  is  nothing  in  the  system 
of  written  constitutions  or  in  the  system  of 
federal  government  to  prevent  the  popular 
will,  when  it  is  once  certain  what  the  popular 
will  is,  from  having  its  way.  If  its  way  leads 
to  an  ever  greater  degree  of  equality  in  the 
distribution  of  wealth,  if  the  popular  will  is 
bent  upon  establishing  a  genuine  social  de- 
mocracy, there  is  no  power  either  in  men 
or  in  institutions  to  prevent  the  achievement 
of  these  ends. 


1  This  proposed  amendment  nas,  since  the  above  was  written,  been 
ratified  by  the  necessary  three-fourths  of  the  states. 


NEW  WORLD   DEMOCRACY   AND   OLD  WORLD 
INTERVENTION 


THE  first  years  of  independence  were  taken 
up  with  attempts  to  solve  the  many  prob- 
lems of  peaceful  reconstruction  under  a  fed- 
eral government  which  was  one  of  the  weakest 
ever  devised  by  the  hand  of  man.  By  1786 
all  far-sighted  men  realized  that  a  stronger 
bond  of  union  would  have  to  be  created  if  the 
United  States  were  not  to  dissolve  into  thir- 
teen completely  independent  republics;  and 
the  movement  for  strengthening  the  Articles 
of  Confederation  resulted  in  the  Constitu- 
tional Convention  of  1787  which  formulated 
the  present  Constitution.  Within  the  next  two 
years  the  Constitution  was  referred  to  the  sev- 
eral states  for  ratification,  and  in  1789  the  new 
government  went  into  operation  with  the  in- 
auguration of  George  Washington  as  the  first 
President.  It  was  essentially  over  the  ques- 

108 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

tions  giving  rise  to  the  formation  of  a  new 
Constitution,  and  over  the  question  of  the 
new  Constitution  itself  and  of  its  approval 
or  rejection,  that  the  people  gradually  divided 
into  two  chief  political  parties.  Those  who 
were  in  favor  of  the  new  Constitution  were 
called  Federalists  because  they  wished  for  a 
more  effective  federal  union  of  the  states; 
those  who  opposed  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution were  at  first  called  Anti-Federalists, 
but  later,  after  the  Constitution  was  in  fact 
adopted,  they  called  themselves  Democratic 
Republicans.  Washington,  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton, and  John  Adams  were  the  spokesmen 
of  the  Federalists,  while  Thomas  Jefferson 
was  for  many  years  the  acknowledged  and 
undisputed  leader  of  the  Republicans. 

Both  the  Federalists  and  the  Republicans 
were  anti-monarchical.  Both  accepted  the 
idea  of  self-government  as  it  had  been  prac- 
tised in  the  Colonies,  and  both  accepted  the 
Revolution  as  having  forever  put  an  end  to 
hereditary  kings  and  a  hereditary  nobility  in 
America.  But  they  differed  in  their  respective 
attitudes  toward  popular  government,  its 
sources  of  strength  and  of  weakness,  and  the 
limitations  which  should  be  placed  upon  it. 
The  Republicans  were  what  would  to-day  be 
called  a  radical  party,  the  Federalists  a  con- 
servative party.  Hamilton  had  little  faith 

109 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  the  virtue  or  the  wisdom  of  "the  people," 
and  none  at  all  in  their  capacity  for  efficient 
government.  According  to  him  only  the 
people  with  property  had  a  sufficient  interest 
in  good  government  to  be  intrusted  with  polit- 
ical power.  He  thought  that  the  propertied 
classes,  in  defense  of  their  property,  would 
be  the  surest  bulwark  against  the  double  dan- 
ger of  autocracy  and  anarchy,  and  in  general 
the  fact  that  a  man  possessed  property  was 
likely  to  be  an  evidence  of  industry,  thrift, 
and  intelligence.  The  mass  of  the  people,  if 
they  were  given  power,  having  nothing  to  lose, 
would  be  keen  for  depriving  others  of  that 
which  they  had  themselves  never  been  suffi- 
ciently industrious  or  intelligent  to  acquire. 
Hamilton  therefore  believed  in  government 
for  the  people  by  the  most  intelligent  and 
prosperous  people. 

Many  Federalists  were  not  so  frank  as 
Hamilton  in  expressing  their  views,  but  they 
all  shared  his  anti-democratic  philosophy. 
The  experience  of  the  Revolutionary  War  and 
the  years  immediately  following  had  made 
many  men  more  conservative  than  they  had 
once  been.  John  Adams's  enthusiasm  for  a 
republic  founded  on  virtue  had  greatly  cooled, 
and  the  fear  of  revolution  replaced  in  his  later 
years  the  fears  of  tyranny  which  had  inspired 
him  in  middle  age.  Especially  after  the  French 

no 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Revolution  had  run  its  course,  proclaiming  the 
Terror  and  the  de-Christianization  of  France, 
proclaiming  the  mission  of  the  republic  to 
carry  the  blessings  of  liberty  and  equality  to 
all  nations,  conservative  and  conventional 
people  everywhere  came  to  fear  revolution  as 
a  dangerous  and  insidious  menace  to  estab- 
lished order.  In  their  minds  the  word  "revo- 
lution" aroused  the  same  repulsion  that  the 
word  "bolshevism"  arouses  in  our  day — it 
was  synonymous  with  anarchy  in  government 
and  with  atheism  in  religion. 

At  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  "upper  classes"  in  every  European  coun- 
try shared  these  views.  The  Federalists  were 
the  people  in  America  who  shared  them  be- 
cause the  Federalists  were  for  the  most  part 
the  well-to-do.  The  strength  of  the  Federal- 
ists was  greater  in  New  England  than  in  the 
South,  greater  in  the  centers  of  trade  and  in- 
dustry than  in  the  farming  districts,  greater 
among  the  educated  than  among  the  unedu- 
cated, greater  among  the  rich  than  among  the 
poor.  The  Federalists  therefore  voted  for  the 
Federal  Constitution  and  were  in  favor  of 
enlarging  the  functions  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment, not  only  because  a  strong  federal  govern- 
ment would  serve  the  economic  interests  of 
the  industrial  and  moneyed  classes,  but  also 
because  it  would  be  less  amenable  to  popular 

in 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

control  than  state  governments  had  been,  and 
would  serve  as  a  needed  check  upon  such 
radical  political  tendencies  as  might  find  ex- 
pression in  certain  parts  of  the  country.  The 
dangerous  ideas  of  Thomas  Jefferson  might 
gain  complete  ascendancy  in  Virginia,  but  as 
long  as  the  Federal  Constitution  held,  the 
state  of  Virginia  would  never  be  able  to  carry 
out  a  program  that  involved  anything  so 
revolutionary  or  Jacobinical  as  "impairing 
the  obligation  of  a  contract." 

The  bad  odor  of  the  word  "  revolution  "  was 
easily  communicated  to  the  word  "republi- 
can," since  it  was  the  French  Republic  that 
inaugurated  the  Terror  and  made  the  name 
of  revolution  hateful.  Therefore  the  Federal- 
ists feared  Jefferson  and  his  "Republican" 
followers  not  only  because  they  professed  to 
have  entire  faith  in  the  capacity  of  the  people 
for  government,  but  because  they  still  re- 
tained the  sympathy  with  the  revolutionary 
movement  in  France  which  nearly  every  one 
had  expressed  in  the  days  before  the  Terror. 
The  fear  was  genuine  enough  in  most  cases, 
but  it  was  also  good  politics  to  fasten  upon 
their  opponents  the  terrible  names  "Jaco- 
bins" and  "atheists,"  and  to  denounce  them 
as  men  who  desired  to  destroy  government, 
confiscate  property,  and  abolish  morality. 

The  bitterness  with  which  the  Federalists 

112 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

attacked  Jefferson,  the  solemn  confidence  with 
which  they  assured  the  public  that  the  Re- 
publicans were  the  desperate  and  determined 
enemies  of  the  human  race,  is  almost  in- 
credible. July  7,  1 80 1,  after  the  inauguration 
of  Jefferson  as  President,  Theodore  Dwight, 
an  intelligent  and  educated  New  England 
Federalist,  delivered  an  address  in  which  he 
gave  vent  to  the  following  sentiment: 

The  great  object  of  Jacobinism,  both  in  its  political 
and  moral  revolution,  is  to  destroy  every  trace  of  civil- 
ization in  the  world  and  force  mankind  back  into  a 
savage  state.  We  have  now  reached  the  consummation 
of  democratic  blessedness.  [He  is  referring  to  the 
election  of  Jefferson.]  We  have  a  country  governed  by 
blockheads  and  knaves;  the  ties  of  marriage  with  all 
its  felicities  are  severed  and  destroyed;  our  wives 
and  daughters  are  thrown  into  the  stews;  our  children 
are  cast  into  the  world  from  the  breast  and  forgotten; 
filial  piety  is  extinguished,  and  surnames,  the  only 
mark  of  distinction  among  families,  are  abolished. 
Can  the  imagination  paint  anything  more  dreadful  on 
this  side  of  hell  ? 

It  would  indeed  have  been  difficult  for  the 
imagination,  even  of  an  excited  New  England 
Federalist,  to  paint  anything  more  dreadful— 
or  anything  more  remote  from  the  wishes  or 
the  purpose  of  the  humane  and  kindly  leader 
of  the  Republican  party.  Thomas  Jefferson, 
the  author  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

still  held  to  the  doctrine  that  "all  men  are 
created  equal,"  and  never  lost  his  faith  in 
those  ideals  of  popular  government  and  re- 
publican virtue,  of  the  innate  goodness  of 
man,  of  the  regenerative  power  of  simple  and 
genuinely  democratic  institutions,  which  were 
proclaimed  by  the  generous  minds  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  which  furnished  the 
driving  force  of  the  American  and  French 
revolutions.  In  spite  of  the  failure  of  both 
revolutions  to  realize  these  ideals  in  any  per- 
fect way,  in  spite  of  the  disillusionment  which 
swept  so  many  honest  men  into  reaction,  Jef- 
ferson remained  a  democrat.  He  believed  in 
government  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  and 
by  the  people. 

The  Republicans  were  those  who  on  the 
whole  followed  Jefferson.  They  retained  their 
early  republican  faith.  They  looked  at  the 
question  of  government  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  pursuit  of  happiness  rather  than 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  maintenance  of 
security,  and  were  more  concerned  for  the 
rights  of  men  than  for  the  protection  of  prop- 
erty. Accordingly,  they  would  have  govern- 
ment frankly  responsive  to  the  popular  will, 
freed  from  the  control  of  any  "upper  class," 
either  of  birth  or  wealth  or  education.  They 
would  have  government  as  simple  as  possible, 
limited  to  the  protection  of  life  and  property. 

114 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

For  all  of  these  reasons  they  had  mostly 
opposed  the  new  Constitution,  and  when  it 
was  once  adopted  they  wished  to  restrict  the 
functions  and  powers  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment as  much  as  possible,  and  to  preserve  to 
the  people  of  each  state  all  the  essential  powers 
of  sovereignty.  In  those  days  of  difficult  com- 
munication, the  Jeffersonian  Republican  felt 
that  only  a  government  that  was  close  at 
hand  could  be  properly  watched,  and  only  a 
government  that  was  limited  to  a  small  terri- 
tory could  retain  a  primitive  and  arcadian 
simplicity;  a  government  in  the  distant  city 
of  New  York  or  Washington,  with  extensive 
jurisdiction  over  the  whole  country,  was  likely 
to  develop  into  a  complicated  bureaucracy  as 
open  to  intrigue  and  as  difficult  to  control 
as  the  most  hateful  monarchy  of  Europe. 

Monarchy!  This,  after  all,  so  the  Repub- 
licans professed  to  believe,  was  what  the 
Federalists  secretly  wanted.  They  were  aim- 
ing at  the  destruction  of  republican  liberty. 
Did  they  not  openly  denounce  the  French 
Republic  and  all  its  works?  Did  they  not 
openly  sympathize  with  the  British  govern- 
ment, that  very  power  which  had  so  long  en- 
deavored to  enslave  America?  Did  they  not 
openly  profess  a  contempt  for  the  "mob,"  the 
"canaille"?  What  could  this  mean  except 
that  these  so-called  Federalists  were  in  their 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

hearts  aristocrats,  monarchists  in  disguise, 
who  were  waiting  for  the  day  when  with  the 
aid  of  British  gold  they  could  proclaim  the 
Kingdom  of  America  and  have  themselves 
made  Dukes  of  New  York  and  Earls  of  Bos- 
ton? The  imagination  of  the  Republican 
journalists  was  as  active  as  that  of  Theodore 
Dwight,  and  in  their  vilification  of  Hamilton 
and  Adams,  and  of  Washington  himself,  they 
exhausted  the  rich  sources  of  the  English 
language.  No  human  motive  was  too  low  or 
sordid  or  cowardly  to  be  imputed  to  these  one- 
time patriots  and  heroes. 

The  profound  gulf  which  separated  the  two 
groups  of  the  American  people  in  the  early 
years  of  the  Republic  is  a  point  of  first-rate 
importance.  It  is  true  that  the  vile  names 
which  Federalists  and  Republicans  flung  at 
each  other  were  often  enough  no  more  than 
the  engaging  amenities  of  party  politics.  But 
the  mutual  hatred  of  the  two  parties  had  also 
its  solid  foundation  in  a  genuine  fear.  Each 
party  feared  that  the  other  was  un-American. 
Each  party  feared  that  the  other  was  so  en- 
tangled with  certain  European  influences  that 
its  success  would  destroy  American  institu- 
tions. The  Republicans  feared  that  the  Fed- 
eralists were  so  tied  to  Great  Britain  that  they 
were  ready  to  undo  the  work  of  the  Revolu- 
tion; the  Federalists  feared  that  the  Repub- 

116 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

licans  were  so  infected  with  French  Jacobin- 
ism that  they  were  ready  to  proclaim  the  Ter- 
ror and  plunge  America  into  the  confusion 
created  by  Robespierre  and  exploited  by  Na- 
poleon. The  profound  and  apparently  ir-^ 
reconcilable  hostility  which  threatened  to 
shipwreck  the  New  World  experiment  in 
democratic  government  was  primarily  due  to 
the  connection  which  still  existed,  or  was  sup- 
posed to  exist,  between  American  and  Euro- 
pean politics.  Able  men  on  both  sides  of  the 
ocean  believed  that  the  United  States  must 
surrender  either  its  independence  or  its  free 
government;  that  its 'feeble  government  must 
either  give  place  to  a  strong  monarchy  or  in 
self-defense  be  drawn  into  the  system  of  Euro- 
pean alliances  and  so  lose  the  better  part  of 
independence.  For  a  generation  the  history 
of  the  United  States  centered  in  this  issue. 
The  future  of  the  American  experiment  in 
democracy  depended  upon  its  being  freed 
from  the  entanglements  of  European  politics 
and  the  danger  of  European  intervention. 

For  a  hundred  years  before  the  Colonies 
won  their  independence  from  Great  Britain 
they  had  been  drawn  into  every  European 
war,  with  or  without  their  consent,  whether 
or  not  their  essential  interests  were  involved. 
In  his  famous  pamphlet  entitled  Common 
Sense  Thomas  Paine  pointed  out  that  one 

117 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

advantage  of  independence  from  Great  Britain 
would  be  the  consequent  freedom  from  Euro- 
pean quarrels  and  conflicts. 

We  have  boasted  the  protection  of  Great  Britain, 
without  considering  that  her  motive  was  interest,  not 
attachment;  and  that  she  did  not  protect  us  from  our 
enemies  on  our  own  account,  but  from  her  enemies 
on  her  own  account,  and  from  those  who  have  no  quar- 
rel with  us  on  any  other  account,  and  who  will  always  be 
our  enemies  on  the  same  account.  [Therefore]  our  duty 
to  mankind  at  large,  as  well  as  to  ourselves,  instructs 
us  to  renounce  the  alliance:  because,  any  submission 
to,  or  dependence  upon,  Great  Britain  tends  directly 
to  involve  this  continent  in  European  wars  and  quarrels, 
and  sets  us  at  variance  with  nations  who  would  other- 
wise seek  our  friendship  and  against  whom  we  have 
neither  anger  nor  complaint. 

This  was  certainly  true  in  part,  and  might 
conceivably  have  proved  altogether  true  had 
peace  prevailed  in  Europe  for  another  gen- 
eration. But,  as  it  turned  out,  the  French 
Revolution  followed  hard  upon  the  American 
War  of  Independence ;  and  the  French  Revo- 
lution gave  rise  to  a  series  of  general  European 
wars  which  began  in  1792  and  lasted  almost 
without  cessation  until  1815.  In  these  wars 
France,  first  under  the  Republic  and  after- 
ward under  the  leadership  of  Napoleon,  was 
pitted  against  all  the  great  powers  of  Europe. 
The  immediate  causes  of  these  wars  were  vari- 

118 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ous,  but  the  underlying  issue  in  the  earlier 
period  was  the  conflict  between  the  demo- 
cratic ideals  of  revolutionary  France  and  the 
old-regime  ideals  of  the  monarchical  states,  and 
in  the  later  period  between  these  same  states 
and  the  revolutionary  and  aggressive  imperial- 
ism of  Napoleon.  Throughout  the  period  of 
these  wars  France,  in  times  of  reverse,  claimed 
to  be  fighting  for  national  independence,  and 
in  times  of  victory  for  the  spread  of  a  higher 
civilization  among  the  backward  nations  of 
Europe.  The  allies,  on  the  other  hand,  claimed 
to  be  fighting  in  defense  of  small  nations  and 
for  the  preservation  of  civilization,  and  they 
declared  their  intention  to  continue  the  war 
until  they  had  destroyed,  not,  indeed,  the 
French  people,  but  the  intolerable  menace  of 
the  revolutionary  spirit  and  of  the  ruthless 
militarism  which  was  the  instrument  of  its 
propagation.  From  the  beginning  England 
was  the  organizer  of  all  the  coalitions,  and  in 
the  end  the  great  conflict  was  essentially  one 
between  the  continental  power  of  Napoleon 
and  the  sea  power  of  the  British  Empire. 

When  the  world  war  became  general,  in 
T793>  President  Washington  proclaimed  the 
neutrality  of  the  United  States.  But  neu- 
trality was  easier  proclaimed  than  maintained 
in  respect  to  a  war  in  which  all  Europe  en- 
gaged, which  involved  the  colonial  possessions 
9  119 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  England,  France,  Holland,  and  Spain,  and 
which  was  fought  out  on  every  sea.  The 
difficulty  was  all  the  greater  because  the  War 
of  Independence  had  left  its  heritage  of  ob- 
ligations to  France  and  of  undissolved  con- 
tacts with  England.  As  a  price  of  French  aid 
the  United  States  had  bound  itself,  by  the 
Treaty  of  Alliance  of  1778,  to  guarantee 
"forever  against  all  other  powers  ...  to  His 
Most  Christian  Majesty  the  present  posses- 
sions of  the  Crown  of  France  in  America." 
The  treaty  of  amity  and  commerce  of  the 
same  year  accorded  to  France  special  com- 
mercial favors  and  the  right  to  carry  French 
prizes  into  American  ports.  On  the  other 
hand,  Great  Britain  still  refused  to  surrender 
the  military  posts  in  the  Northwest  on  the 
ground  that  the  United  States  had  refused 
to  indemnify  the  Loyalists  according  to  the 
Treaty  of  1783.  Therefore,  while  France 
counted  confidently  upon  the  United  States 
to  repay  its  old  debt  by  coming  to  her  aid, 
England  used  her  naval  power  to  force  the 
United  States  to  renounce  the  French  com- 
mercial treaty  and  conspired  with  Spain  to 
recover  the  territory  west  of  the  Alleghanies. 
Under  these  circumstances,  to  proclaim 
neutrality  and  take  the  side  of  neither  party 
was  to  incur  the  enmity  of  both;  and  it  was 
not  to  be  supposed  that  either  belligerent 

120 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

would  respect  the  neutral  rights  of  a  debt- 
ridden  and  divided  country  which  would  be  a 
negligible  factor  even  if  it  went  to  war.  It 
is  true  that  by  going  to  war  the  United  States 
could  at  least  preserve  its  "honor."  But  it 
was  exceedingly  unlikely  that  it  could  en- 
force its  rights  against  either  belligerent  by 
joining  the  other.  In  any  case,  which  side 
should  it  join  ?  Its  neutral  rights  were  equally 
violated  by  England  and  France,  and  while 
the  Federalists  were  keen  for  war  against 
France,  the  Jeffersonian  Republicans  were 
keen  for  war  with  Great  Britain.  By  entering 
actively  into  the  European  conflict,  the  United 
States  might  preserve  a  semblance  of  honor, 
but  it  was  almost  certain  that  it  would  lose 
everything  else.  By  entangling  itself  in  the 
European  system  of  alliances  and  pledging 
itself  to  stand  or  fall  by  a  European  treaty 
the  United  States  would  have  compromised 
the  revolutionary  settlement  of  1783,  invited 
its  own  people  to  engage  in  civil  war,  and 
placed  the  feeble  Republic  in  tutelage  to  the 
great  powers  of  Europe. 

President  Washington  was  far  -  sighted 
enough  to  see  that  the  great  end  to  be  attained— 
the  great  end  both  for  America  and  for  the 
world — was  the  preservation  of  the  federal 
Union  as  the  only  hope  for  the  continued  exist- 
ence of  free  institutions.  He  preferred  to  suffer 

121 


THE     UNITED  STATES 

repeated  humiliation  rather  than,  as  the  price 
of  national  "honor/'  to  bring  the  promising 
experiment  in  democracy  to  an  untimely  end. 
In  his  famous  "Farewell  Address"  he  accord- 
ingly gave  classic  expression  to  the  policy 
which  the  United  States  ought  to  pursue  in 
regard  to  European  politics,  as  well  as  to  the 
motives  which  justified  it. 

The  great  rule  of  conduct  for  us,  in  regard  to  foreign 
nations,  is,  in  extending  our  commercial  relations,  to 
have  with  them  as  little  'political  connection  as  possible. 
.  .  .  Europe  has  a  set  of  primary  interests,  which  to  us 
have  none,  or  a  very  remote  relation.  Hence  she  must 
be  engaged  in  frequent  controversies,  the  causes  of 
which  are  essentially  foreign  to  our  concerns.  Hence, 
therefore,  it  must  be  unwise  in  us  to  implicate  our- 
selves, by  artificial  ties  in  the  ordinary  vicissitudes  of 
her  politics,  or  the  -ordinary  combinations  and  col- 
lisions of  her  friendships  or  enmities.  ...  If  we  remain 
one  people,  under  an  efficient  government,  the  period 
is  not  far  off  when  .  .  .  belligerent  nations,  under  the 
impossibility  of  making  acquisitions  upon  us,  will  not 
lightly  hazard  the  giving  us  provocation;  when  we 
may  choose  peace  or  war,  as  our  interests  guided  by 
justice  shall  counsel.  Why  forego  the  advantages  of 
so  peculiar  a  situation?  .  .  .  Why,  by  interweaving  our 
destiny  with  that  of  any  part  of  Europe,  entangle  our 
peace  and  prosperity  in  the  toils  of  European  ambition, 
rivalship,  interest,  humor,  or  caprice? 

It  is  clear  that  Washington  did  not  urge 
his  countrymen  to  adopt  a  policy  of  complete 
isolation;  on  the  contrary,  he  urged  them  to 

122 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

cultivate  relations  with  Europe  in  every  re- 
spect save  one — the  political  relation.  He 
would  have  the  United  States  keep  free  of 
political  alliances.  If  we  would  understand 
why  Washington  so  strongly  urged  this  policy 
we  must  read  the  entire  "Farewell  Address." 
Only  a  small  part  of  that  address  is  devoted 
to  this  point,  which  is  the  only  part  that  is 
often  quoted.  The  principal  part  of  the  ad- 
dress is  concerned  with  those  evils  which 
threatened  to  dissolve  the  Union  and  to  place 
the  stamp  of  failure  on  the  newly  established 
federal  government.  To  prevent  this  greatest 
of  calamities  he  urged  his  countrymen  to  re- 
nounce those  class  enmities  and  sectional  and 
party  rivalries  that  were  likely  to  weaken  the 
union  of  the  states;  and  it  was  precisely  be- 
cause he  felt  that  entangling  alliances  abroad 
would  endanger  the  Union  and  undermine 
free  government  that  he  wished  to  avoid  such 
alliances. 

How  many  opportunities  do  they  [exaggerated  at- 
tachments or  hostilities  to  foreign  nations]  afford  to 
tamper  with  domestic  factions,  to  practise  the  arts  of 
seduction,  to  mislead  public  opinion,  to  influence  or 
awe  the  public  councils! .  .  .  Against  the  insidious  wiles 
of  foreign  influence,  I  conjure  you  to  believe  me,  fellow- 
citizens,  the  jealousy  of  a  free  people  ought  to  be 
constantly  awake,  since  history  and  experience  prove 
that  foreign  influence  is  one  of  the  most  baneful  foes  of 
Republican  Government.  But  that  jealousy  to  be  useful 

123 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

must  be  impartial;  else  it  becomes  the  instrument  of 
the  very  influence  to  be  avoided,  instead  of  a  defense 
against  it. 

The  policy  of  Washington  was  followed  in 
its  essential  points  throughout  the  Napoleonic 
wars.  It  is  true  that  the  United  States  found 
it  necessary  upon  two  occasions  to  abandon 
its  positions  of  neutrality.  The  first  instance 
was  in  1798,  during  the  Presidency  of  John 
Adams,  when  the  grievances  against  France 
became  intolerable.  Washington's  statement 
that  "foreign  influence  is  one  of  the  most 
baneful  foes  of  Republican  Government"  was 
never  more  in  point  than  at  this  time.  French 
agents  in  the  United  States  were  intriguing 
for  the  success  of  the  Republican  party,  and 
they  convinced  the  French  government  that 
the  Federalist  President  was  unsupported  by 
the  people:  "The  friends  of  liberty  in  the 
United  States,  supported  by  the  great  part 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  will  prob- 
ably not  wait  for  the  next  elections,  but  in 
the  mean  time  will  destroy  the  fatal  influence 
of  the  President — by  a  revolution/'  Counting 
upon  this  supposed  pro-French  sentiment,  the 
French  government  at  last  endeavored  to 
bribe  the  American  ambassadors,  whereupon 
the  President  severed  diplomatic  relations 
and  prepared  for  war. 

The  French  government  wanted  support 
124 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

instead  of  war,  and  when  it  discovered  that 
the  people  of  the  United  States  were  prepared 
to  back  the  President  rather  than  to  over- 
throw him  peace  was  quickly  restored.  But 
the  significant  point  in  this  episode  is  that 
President  Adams,  although  forced  to  renounce 
neutrality,  was  careful  to  avoid  committing 
the  United  States  to  any  European  alliances. 
The  very  spirit  of  Washington's  "Farewell 
Address"  speaks  in  the  memoir  which  Adams 
presented  to  his  Cabinet  in  January,  1798: 

Will  it  not  be  the  soundest  policy,  even  in  case  of 
a  declaration  of  war  on  both  sides,  between  France  and 
the  United  States,  for  us  to  be  totally  silent  to  England, 
and  wait  for  her  overtures?  Will  it  not  be  imprudent 
in  us  to  connect  ourselves  with  Britain,  in  any  manner 
that  may  impede  us  in  embracing  the  first  favorable 
moment  to  make  a  separate  peace?  What  aids  or 
benefits  can  we  expect  from  England  by  any  stipu- 
lations with  her,  which  her  interest  will  not  impel  her 
to  extend  to  us  without  any?  On  the  brink  of  the 
dangerous  precipice  on  which  she  stands,  will  not  shak- 
ing hands  with  her  necessitate  us  to  fall  with  her,  if 
she  falls?  On  the  other  hand,  what  aid  could  we 
stipulate  to  afford  her,  which  our  own  interest  would 
not  oblige  us  to  give  without  any  other  obligation? 
In  case  of  a  revolution  in  England,  a  wild  democracy 
will  probably  prevail  for  as  long  a  time  as  it  did  in 
France;  in  such  case,  will  not  the  danger  of  reviving 
and  extending  that  delirium  in  America  be  increased 
in  proportion  to  the  intimacy  of  our  connection  with 
that  nation? 

125 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Although  peace  was  restored  with  France, 
the  neutral  position  of  the  United  States  be- 
came more  and  more  difficult  to  maintain  as 
the  great  conflict  between  Napoleon  and  the 
British  Empire  reached  its  height.  Thomas 
Jefferson,  who  declared  in  the  spirit  of  Wash- 
ington in  favor  of  "peace  with  all  nations, 
entangling  alliances  with  none,"  refused  to 
declare  war  even  in  the  face  of  the  most  fla- 
grant violation  of  neutral  rights  on  the  part  of 
both  England  and  France.  To  compel  a  recog- 
nition of  those  rights,  he  resorted  to  commercial 
warfare,  laying  an  embargo  upon  all  American 
commerce  with  both  belligerents.  The  em- 
bargo proved  a  vain  measure,  and  at  last  the 
United  States  once  more  resorted  to  war  to 
enforce  its  neutral  rights.  Our  grievances 
against  France  were  not  less  than  those 
against  England,  but  James  Madison,  the 
Republican  successor  of  Jefferson,  chose,  for 
reasons  that  are  obscure  to  this  day,  to  make 
war  on  England.  Nevertheless,  he  followed 
the  precedent  of  John  Adams  in  carefully 
refraining  from  allying  the  United  States  with 
Great  Britain's  enemy.  For  two  years  the 
United  States  carried  on  the  war  on  its  own 
hook,  and  the  peace  which  it  made  in  1814 
was  no  part  of  the  great  European  settlement 
which  was  then  already  in  process  of  being 

effected. 

126 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Referring  to  the  negotiations  between  the 
American  and  British  ambassadors  at  Ghent, 
Pozzi  di  Borgo  wrote  these  significant  words 
to  Nesselrode  on  August  9,  1814: 

The  conclusion  of  this  important  matter  is  uncer- 
tain. The  dominant  party  in  America,  which  desired 
the  war,  is  aiming  at  a  complete  revolution  in  the 
relations  of  the  New  World  with  the  Old,  by  the  de- 
struction of  all  European  interests  in  the  American 
continent. 

The  War  of  1812  is  sometimes  called  the 
second  war  of  American  independence.  It  is 
in  fact  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  years 
1814-15  ended  the  dependence  of  the  United 
States  not  only  upon  Great  Britain,  but  upon 
Europe  as  well. 

ii 

The  Treaty  of  Ghent,  the  overthrow  of 
Napoleon,  and  the  European  settlement  of 
the  Congress  of  Vienna  were  welcomed  by  the 
people  of  America  with  universal  joy.  For  a 
quarter  of  a  century  the  tremendous  upheaval 
in  the  Old  World  had  disturbed  the  peace  and 
threatened  the  very  existence  of  the  United 
States.  The  war  with  England  had  not  been 
a  brilliant  success,  but  it  had  not  been  a 
failure,  and  the  record  in  the  war  and  the  terms 
of  the  peace  were  such  as  a  young  nation, 

127 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

which  for  twenty  years  had  been  treated  with 
contemptuous  insolence,  might  regard  as  a 
vindication  of  its  rights  and  a  justification  for 
self-respect.  With  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena 
and  the  powers  desirous  of  peace  at  all  haz- 
ards, the  people  of  the  United  States,  with  an 
immense  sigh  of  relief,  turned  their  backs  on 
the  Old  World  and  its  affairs  and  with  buoyant 
enthusiasm  took  up  their  proper  task — the  de- 
velopment of  those  inexhaustible  resources  that 
would  one  day  make  them  great  and  powerful. 
Buoyant  enthusiasm  and  unlimited  self- 
confidence  were  indeed  the  characteristic  note 
in  the  United  States  during  the  decade  after 
1815.  The  Napoleonic  wars  had  contributed 
immensely  to  the  industrial  and  commercial 
prosperity  of  the  country,  and  the  financial 
situation  of  the  government  was  excellent  in 
spite  of  the  expenses  of  the  War  of  1812. 
But,  above  all,  the  old  internal  dissensions 
between  Federalists  and  Republicans  had 
disappeared.  The  country  was  thoroughly 
wedded  to  its  institutions,  and  no  one  any 
longer  feared  the  monarchical  inclinations  of  a 
pro-British  party  or  the  Jacobinism  of  a  pro- 
French  party.  There  were  indeed  no  longer 
any  pro-British  or  pro-French  parties.  All 
parties  were  thoroughly  American.  The  coun- 
try had  found  itself;  it  knew  well  that  it 

was  no  mere  appendage  of  Europe;    and  it 

128 


i 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

was  determined  at  all  hazards  that  Europe 
should  recognize  the  fact. 

The  consciousness  that  the  United  States 
was  destined  to  run  a  different  course  than 
Europe  was  strengthened  by  contemporary 
events  in  South  America.  When  Napoleon 
overturned  the  Bourbon  monarchy  in  Spain, 
the  Spanish  colonies  took  advantage  of  the 
opportunity  to  throw  off  their  allegiance  to 
the  mother  country,  and,  in  imitation  of  the 
British  colonies  a  generation  earlier,  they  or- 
ganized their  governments  on  the  republican 
model  of  the  United  States.  By  1820  the 
de  facto  South  American  republics  had  virt- 
ually won  their  independence,  and,  like  the 
United  States,  they  wished  only  to  go  their 
own  way  freed  from  European  tutelage.  The 
United  States,  naturally  enough,  was  prompt 
to  give  formal  recognition  to  these  new  sister 
republics;  of  the  superiority  of  republican 
institutions  she  could  not  doubt,  and  it  was 
for  her  an  immense  satisfaction  to  think  of 
the  entire  New  World  as  the  home  of  freedom. 

The  Old  World  was  less  pleased  with  such 
a  prospect.  To  the  ruling  classes  in  Europe, 
Napoleon  was  (what  he  called  himself)  the 
"child  of  the  Revolution,"  and  to  the  ruling 
classes  the  "  Revolution"  was  therefore  respon- 
sible for  twenty-five  years  of  political  insecu- 
rity and  of  desolating  war.  After  1815  the  chief 

129 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

aim  of  the  principal  states  was  to  prevent  a 
repetition  of  the  stupendous  conflicts  which 
had  characterized  the  Napoleonic  era.  To 
preserve  the  peace  of  Europe,  in  the  opinion 
of  Metternich,  who  was  the  guiding  spirit, 
at  least  after  1818,  of  the  Concert  of  Europe, 
it  was  necessary  to  maintain  the  existing 
political  system.  The  chief  danger  to  the 
existing  political  system  was  manifestly  those 
republican  theories  spread  abroad  by  the 
American  and  French  revolutions.  It  was, 
therefore,  the  duty  of  the  great  powers  to 
act  in  concert  in  the  suppression  of  all  revo- 
lutions intended  to  propagate  or  establish  re- 
publican institutions.  On  these  grounds  revo- 
lutions in  Italy  were  suppressed  by  Austria, 
and  France  was  given  a  free  hand  in  restoring 
the  Bourbons  to  the  Spanish  throne. 

If  republican  institutions  were  a  menace 
to  the  peace  and  good  order  of  Europe,  the 
rulers  of  the  great  powers  manifestly  could 
not  contemplate  the  spread  of  those  institu- 
tions in  America  without  misgiving.  The 
King  of  Spain,  once  restored  to  his  throne, 
therefore  "  seriously  turned  his  thoughts  to  the 
fate  of  his  American  dominions."  The  powers 
were  accordingly  notified  that 

the  king  has  resolved  upon  inviting  the  cabinets  of 
his  dear  and  intimate  allies  to  establish  a  conference 
at  Paris,  to  the  end  that  their  plenipotentiaries  .  .  . 

130 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

may  aid  Spain  in  adjusting  the  affairs  of  the  revolted 
countries  of  America.  .  .  .  His  Majesty  .  .  .  hopes  that 
they  will  assist  him  in  accomplishing  the  worthy  object 
of  upholding  the  principles  of  order  and  legitimacy, 
the  subversion  of  which,  once  commenced  in  America, 
would  presently  communicate  to  Europe. 

It  was  no  longer,  as  it  had  been  in  1795,  a 
question  of  European  intervention  in  the  af- 
fairs of  the  United  States,  but  a  question  of 
whether  the  European  powers,  having  as- 
sumed the  duty  of  regulating  European  affairs 
in  harmony  with  monarchical  principles,  were 
to  be  permitted  to  regulate  the  affairs  of  any 
part  of  America  in  harmony  with  these  prin- 
ciples. Under  these  circumstances,  the  United 
States  still  refused  to  become  implicated  in 
the  European  system  of  alliances,  or  to  take 
any  part  in  regulating  the  affairs  of  Europe; 
but  in  addition  to  this,  it  now  proclaimed  a 
new  principle  which  was  but  the  complement 
of  the  old.  Since  the  political  system  of  Eu- 
rope was  monarchical  while  that  of  America 
was  republican,  the  United  States  would  take 
no  part  in  regulating  the  political  affairs  of 
Europe,  and  it  would  therefore  expect  the 
European  powers  to  take  no  part  in  regulating 
the  political  affairs  of  America. 

The  first  part  of  this  double  policy  was 
clearly  stated  by  John  Quincy  Adams  in  1820, 
in  an  interview  with  Stratford  Canning,  the 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

English  Minister  to  the  United  States.  The 
English  government  had  invited  the  United 
States  to  take  part  in  the  Congress  of  Toppau, 
and  in  reply  to  this  invitation  Secretary  Adams 
said  that 

the  European  alliances  .  .  .  had  .  .  .  regulated  the  affairs 
of  all  Europe  without  ever  calling  the  United  States 
to  their  consultations.  It  was  best  for  both  parties 
that  they  should  continue  to  do  so;  for  if  the  United 
States  should  become  a  member  of  the  body  they 
would  .  .  .  bring  to  it  some  principles  not  congenial  to 
those  of  the  other  members,  and  those  principles  would 
lead  to  discussions  tending  to  discord  rather  than  to 
harmony. 

The  corollary  to  this  principle  was  obvious ; 
if  the  United  States  would  bring  to  a  Euro- 
pean congress  "some  principles  not  congenial 
to  those  of  the  other  members/'  it  was  equally 
true  that  the  European  powers,  if  they  should 
assume  to  regulate  American  affairs,  would 
bring  to  that  business  principles  not  congenial 
to  the  United  States.  Certainly  America  had  as 
valid  a  right  to  become  republican  if  it  wished 
to  as  Europe  had  to  remain  monarchical; 
and  republicanism  was  no  more  dangerous  to 
the  peace  of  Europe  than  monarchism  was  to 
the  peace  of  America.  In  view  of  the  threat- 
ened intervention  of  the  European  powers  in 

South  America,  an  intervention  based  avowed- 

132 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ly  upon  hostility  to  republican  institutions, 
President  Monroe  formulated  in  his  message 
of  1823  the  policy  (the  policy  was  that  of  John 
Quincy  Adams  more  than  that  of  the  Presi- 
dent) which  has  ever  since  been  known  as  the 
Monroe  Doctrine: 

In  the  wars  of  European  powers  [the  President  said], 
in  matters  relating  to  themselves  we  have  never  taken 
any  part.  .  .  .  Our  policy  in  regard  to  Europe  ...  is 
not  to  interfere  in  the  internal  concerns  of  any  of  its 
powers;  to  consider  the  Government  de  facto  as  the 
legitimate  government  for  us;  to  cultivate  friendly  re- 
lations with  it,  and  to  preserve  those  relations  by  a 
frank,  firm,  and  manly  policy,  meeting,  in  all  instances, 
the  just  claims  of  every  power;  submitting  to  injuries 
from  none.  [On  the  other  hand]  With  the  movements 
in  this  hemisphere  we  are,  of  necessity,  more  immedi- 
ately connected,  and  by  causes  which  must  be  obvious 
to  all  enlightened  and  impartial  observers.  The  politi- 
cal system  of  the  allied  powers  is  essentially  different 
in  this  respect  from  that  of  America.  This  difference 
proceeds  from  that  which  exists  in  their  respective 
governments.  And  to  the  defense  of  our  own,  which 
has  been  achieved  by  the  loss  of  so  much  blood  and 
treasure,  and  matured  by  the  wisdom  of  their  most 
enlightened  citizens,  and  under  which  we  have  en- 
joyed unexampled  felicity,  this  whole  nation  is  devoted. 
We  owe  it,  therefore,  to  candor,  and  to  the  amicable 
relations  existing  between  the  United  States  and  those 
powers,  to  declare  that  we  should  consider  any  at- 
tempt on  their  part  to  extend  their  system  to  any  por- 
tion of  this  hemisphere  as  dangerous  to  our  peace  and 
safety.  With  the  existing  colonies  or  dependencies 

133 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  any  European  power  we  have  not  interfered  and 
shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the  governments  who 
have  declared  their  independence,  and  maintained  it, 
and  whose  independence  we  have,  on  great  consider- 
ation and  on  just  principles,  acknowledged,  we  could 
not  view  any  interposition  for  the  purpose  of  oppressing 
them,  or  controlling  in  any  other  manner  their  destiny, 
by  any  European  power,  in  any  other  light  than  as 
the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly  disposition  toward 
the  United  States. 

The  essential  point  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
was  that,  in  defense  of  those  democratic  in- 
stitutions to  which  America  was  committed, 
the  United  States  would  oppose  the  extension 
of  the  European  political  system  to  this  con- 
tinent. The  most  notable  attempt  to  extend 
the  political  system  of  Europe  to  America 
occurred  during  the  Civil  War,  when  Emperor 
Napoleon  III,  by  means  of  the  French  army, 
established  an  Austrian  prince  in  Mexico  on 
the  ruins  of  her  former  republican  institutions. 
Against  this  enterprise  the  United  States  pro- 
tested vigorously,  and  the  grounds  of  this  pro- 
test were  clearly  stated  by  Secretary  Seward 
in  1865: 

The  real  cause  of  our  natural  discontent  is,. that  the 
French  army  which  is  now  in  Mexico  is  invading  a 
domestic  republican  government  there  which  was 
established  by  her  people  ...  for  the  avowed  purpose 
of  suppressing  it  and  establishing  upon  its  ruins  a 
foreign  monarchical  government,  whose  presence  there, 

134 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

so  long  as  it  should  endure,  could  not  but  be  regarded 
by  the  people  of  the  United  States  as  injurious  and 
menacing  to  their  own  chosen  and  endeared  republican 
institutions.  .  .  .  The  people  of  every  State  on  the 
American  continent  have  a  right  to  secure  for  them- 
selves a  republican  government  if  they  choose,  and  .  .  . 
interference  by  foreign  states  to  prevent  the  enjoy- 
ment of  such  institutions  deliberately  established  is 
wrongful,  and  in  its  effects  antagonistical  to  the  free 
and  popular  form  of  government  existing  in  the  United 
States. 

The  United  States  has  thus  defended  the 
less  powerful  states  of  America  from  European 
intervention;  but  these  less  powerful  states 
might  well  ask,  and  have  sometimes  asked, 
what  guaranty  they  could  have  against  in- 
tervention from  the  United  States  herself. 
They  might  well  ask  whether  the  United 
States  was  not  interested  in  preventing  the 
European  powers  from  extending  their  polit- 
ical system  to  South  America  in  order  that 
her  own  political  influence  might  be  extended 
there.  The  conduct  of  the  United  States  has 
too  often  justified  this  fear.  The  unjustifiable 
war  with  Mexico  in  1846  was  the  most  notable 
example  of  those  instances  in  which  the  United 
States  has  employed  its  greater  power  to 
further  its  own  interests  at  the  expense  of 
weak  neighbors.  But  on  the  whole,  the  United 
States  has  not  greatly  abused  its  assumed 
position  of  supremacy  in  the  affairs  of  the 

10  135 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

American  continents,  and  President  Wilson 
has  taken  repeated  occasion  to  reassure  the 
small  states  of  America  in  respect  to  the  future 
policy  of  the  United  States.  Above  all,  his 
Mexican  policy  has  been  based  frankly  upon 
the  principle  that  the  people  of  Mexico  may 
look  to  the  United  States  for  protection  against 
European  interference  without  fearing  that 
she  will  herself  interfere  in  their  affairs.  His 
attitude  was  clearly  expressed  in  an  address 
delivered  on  January  8,  1915: 

I  hold  it  as  a  fundamental  principle,  and  so  do  you, 
that  every  people  has  the  right  to  determine  its  own 
form  of  government;  and  until  this  recent  revolution 
in  Mexico,  until  the  end  of  the  Diaz  regime,  80  per  cent, 
of  the  people  of  Mexico  never  had  a  "look-in"  in 
determining  who  should  be  their  governor  or  what 
their  government  should  be.  Now,  I  am  for  the  80 
per  cent.  It  is  none  of  my  business,  and  it  is  none  of 
your  business,  how  long  they  take  in  determining  it. 
It  is  none  of  my  business  and  it  is  none  of  yours  how  they 
go  about  the  business.  The  country  is  theirs.  The 
government  is  theirs.  The  liberty,  if  they  can  get  it, 
and  God  speed  them  in  getting  it,  is  theirs.  And  so 
far  as  my  influence  goes  while  I  am  President  nobody 
shall  interfere  with  them.  .  .  . 

Do  you  suppose  that  the  American  people  are  ever 
going  to  count  a  small  amount  of  material  benefit 
and  advantage  to  people  doing  business  in  Mexico 
against  the  permanent  happiness  of  the  Mexican  people  ? 
Have  not  European  nations  taken  as  long  as  they 
wanted  and  spilled  as  much  blood  as  they  pleased 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in  settling  their  own  affairs,  and  shall  we  deny  that  to 
Mexico  because  she  is  weak?  No,  I  say!  I  am  proud 
to  belong  to  a  strong  nation  that  says:  "This  country, 
which  we  could  crush,  shall  have  just  as  much  freedom 
in  her  own  affairs  as  we  have.  If  I  am  strong,  I  am 
ashamed  to  bully  the  weak.  In  proportion  to  my 
strength  is  my  pride  in  withholding  that  strength  from 
the  oppression  of  another  people." 

An  episode  in  recent  years  which  might 
well  give  the  states  of  South  America  reason 
to  fear  the  United  States  occurred  in  con- 
nection with  the  construction  of  the  Panama 
Canal.  In  order  to  build  that  long-delayed 
and  highly  desirable  highway  to  the  Pacific, 
it  was  necessary  to  obtain  a  concession  from 
the  state  of  Colombia.  The  state  of  Colombia, 
doubtless  desiring  to  make  as  good  a  bargain 
as  possible,  refused  to  ratify  a  treaty  which 
had  been  negotiated;  whereupon  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  encouraged,  if  it 
did  not  instigate,  a  petty  revolution  in  that 
country,  and  hastened  overnight  to  recognize 
the  new  Republic  of  Panama,  from  which  the 
concession  for  the  canal  was  at  once  obtained. 
The  state  of  Colombia  has  sought,  but  so 
far  has  not  obtained,  any  redress  in  the  mat- 
ter; but  a  treaty  providing  for  compensation 
has  long  been  before  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  and  in  his  address  to  Congress  in 
December,  1918,  President  Wilson  urged  upon 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  Senate  the  ratification  of  the  treaty. 
Certainly  the  compensation  provided  in  the 
treaty  is  the  least  the  United  States  should 
rightly  do  to  make  good  an  act  that  can  only 
be  described  as  high-handed  aggression  against 
a  weak  neighbor. 

The  Panama  episode  is  one  of  many  which 
make  it  impossible  to  maintain  that  the  United 
States  has  invariably  acted  with  chastened 
purposes  and  worthy  aims,  or  that  it  has 
never  invoked  the  Monroe  Doctrine  except 
for  the  disinterested  and  ideal  purpose  of  de- 
fending democratic  institutions.  Nor  can  it 
be  denied  that  the  policy  embodied  in  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  has  been  an  expression  of 
our  material  interests.  The  Monroe  Doctrine 
is  based  upon  material  interests  precisely  as 
much  or  as  little  as  democracy  itself.  It 
may  be  safely  said,  however,  that  in  the  crucial 
instances  of  the  formulation  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  one  essential  and  determining  in- 
fluence has  been  the  incompatibility  of  Euro- 
pean and  American  political  institutions  and 
ideals,  and  fundamentally  our  policy  has  been 
to  protest  against  the  extension  of  the  Euro- 
pean political  system  to  America  because,  on 
account  of  the  incompatibility,  such  an  ex- 
tension would  endanger  our  institutions  as 
well  as  our  interests.  In  this  sense,  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  has  been  the  expression  of  that 

138 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

most  deep-seated  of  American  instincts,  the 
attachment  to  free  government  and  demo- 
cratic social  institutions.  It  is  as  if  we  had 
said  to  Europe:  "We  are  bound  that  this 
great  experiment  in  democracy  shall  have  a 
fair  chance.  It  may  fail  in  the  end.  If  so, 
let  it  at  least  be  clearly  demonstrated  that  the 
failure  is  due  to  inherent  weaknesses  and  not 
to  external  interference.  We  propose,  if  it 
be  a  possible  thing,  to  make  this  part  of  the 
world,  at  least,  safe  for  democracy." 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  has  never  been  so  much  discussed 
as  during  the  last  twenty-five  years.  Nor  has 
there  ever  been  so  little  agreement  in  respect  to 
its  meaning  and  purpose.  The  reason  for  this 
is  obvious:  on  the  one  hand,  most  European 
countries  have  themselves  adopted  democratic 
institutions,  and  in  so  far  as  they  have  done 
so  the  great  objection  to  the  extension  of  the 
European  political  system  to  America  falls 
to  the  ground;  on  the  other  hand,  the  eco- 
nomic, commercial,  and  financial  interde- 
pendence of  all  countries  throughout  the 
world  has  so  immensely  increased  in  recent 
years  that  the  United  States  can  less  easily 
than  formerly  refrain  from  playing  her  part 
in  the  affairs  of  a  world  in  which  the  interests 
of  every  nation  are  intimately  linked  with  the 
interests  of  all. 

139 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  Great  War  has  revealed  this  fact  in  all 
its  dramatic  possibilities.  And  there  is  some- 
thing to  be  said  for  President  Wilson's  con- 
tention that  in  entering  the  war  against  Ger- 
many we  were  not  abandoning  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  but  only  making  a  wider  application 
of  it.  For  a  hundred  years  we  asked,  and  not 
in  vain,  that  Europe  should  leave  America 
free  to  try  the  great  experiment  in  self- 
government.  When  the  better  part  of  Europe 
became  engaged  in  a  desperate  and  uncertain 
struggle  for  the  preservation,  as  it  seemed,  of 
those  very  ideals  of  which  the  United  States 
had  hitherto  been  the  professed  champion, 
how  could  the  United  States  abandon  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  more  completely  than  by 
refusing  to  take  part  in  making  the  world, 
and  therefore  America,  "safe  for  democracy"? 
There  is  something  to  be  said  for  this  idea, 
but  there  are  two  qualifications  of  vital  im- 
portance to  be  insisted  upon.  In  entering 
the  war  the  United  States  needed  to  be  quite 
sure,  and  in  guaranteeing  the  peace  she  needs 
to  be  quite  sure,  that  it  is  democracy  and  not 
capitalistic  imperialism  that  the  world  is  being 
made  safe  for.  She  needs  also  to  be  quite 
clear  that  making  the  world  safe  for  democracy 
is  not  the  same  thing  as  imposing  upon  the 
world  her  own  brand  of  democracy. 

Whether  we  abandon  or  maintain  the  Mon- 
140 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

roe  Doctrine  is  less  important  than  whether 
we  hold  fast  to  or  depart  from  our  profoundest 
traditions.  We  shall  certainly  depart  from 
them  if,  having  for  a  hundred  years  in  the 
name  of  democracy  defended  the  right  of 
American  peoples  to  govern  themselves  in 
their  own  way,  we  now,  in  behalf  of  "law  and 
order/'  deny  that  right  to  any  European 
people  because  they  choose  to  govern  them- 
selves according  to  democratic  forms  that  are 
not  agreeable  to  us.  To  raise  an  army  in 
defense  of  Belgium  and  France  against  Ger- 
man aggressions  may  well  have  been  no  more 
than  a  wider  application  of  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine; but  to  send  American  soldiers  into 
Russia  for  the  suppression  of  the  soviet  gov- 
ernment of  Lenine  is  indeed  to  abandon  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  for  the  ideals  and  the 
methods  of  the  "Holy  Alliance." 


VI 

DEMOCRACY  AND   FREE    LAND 


3.  THIS  land  grows  weary  of  her  inhabitants,  so  as 
man,  who  is  the  most  precious  of  all  creatures,  is  here 
more  vile  and  base  than  the  earth  we  tread  upon,  and 
of  less  price  among  us  than  a  horse  or  a  sheep;  masters 
are  forced  by  authority  to  entertain  servants,  parents 
to  maintain  their  own  children.     All  towns  complain 
of  the  burden  of  their  poor,  though  we  have  taken  up 
many  unnecessary,  yea  unlawful  trades  to  maintain 
them.    And  we  use  the  authority  of  the  law  to  hinder 
the  increase  of  people  as  urging  the  execution  of  the 
state  against  cottages  and  inmates,  and  thus  it  is  come 
to  pass  that  children,  servants,  and  neighbors  (especially 
if  they  be  poor)  are  counted  the  greatest  burden  which 
if  things   were   right   would    be   the   chiefest  earthly 
blessing. 

4.  The  whole  earth  is  the  Lord's  Garden  and  He  hath 
given  it  to  the  sons  of  men,  with  a  general  condition 
(Gen.  1:28).      Increase    and    multiply,    replenish    the 
earth   and   subdue   it,   which   was   again   renewed   to 
Noah;  the  end  is  double,  moral  and  natural,  that  man 
might  enjoy  the  fruits  of  the  earth  and  God  might  have 
his  due  glory  from  the  creatures.    Why  then  should 

142 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

we  stand  here  striving  for  places  of  habitation  (many 
men  spending  as  much  labor  and  cost  to  recover  or 
keep  sometimes  an  acre  or  two  of  land  as  would  secure 
them  many  hundred  as  good  or  better  in  another 
country)  and  in  the  mean  time  suffer  a  whole  continent, 
as  fruitful  and  convenient  for  the  use  of  men  to  lie 
waste  without  any  improvement? 

Such  were  the  third  and  fourth  headings  in 
the  brief  list  of  reasons  in  favor  of  settling 
in  America  which  John  Winthrop,  the  leader 
of  the  European  migration  to  Massachusetts, 
wrote  down  about  the  year  1628.  It  was,  in 
its  way,  a  prophetic  document.  America  has 
indeed  been  a  kind  of  Garden  of  the  Gods. 
"Increase  and  multiply,  replenish  the  earth 
and  subdue  it."  This  might  stand  as  a  text 
of  which  the  entire  history  of  the  United 
States  is  hardly  more  than  a  proper  amplifi- 
cation. In  America  men  have  never  had  to 
"stand — striving  for  places  of  habitation." 
On  the  contrary,  the  United  States  has  always 
had,  until  very  recently,  more  land  than  it 
could  use  and  fewer  people  than  it  needed; 
and  this  is  not  only  the  fundamental  economic 
difference  between  the  United  States  and 
European  countries,  but  it  is  a  condition 
which  has  more  influence  than  any  other  in 
determining  the  course  of  American  history 
and  in  molding  that  complex  force  which  we 
call  American  national  character. 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

"America  is  opportunity,"  as  Emerson 
said.  No  phrase  so  well  expresses  what  the 
United  States  has  stood  for,  both  to  its  own 
citizens  and  to  the  outcast  and  the  dis- 
possessed of  the  Old  World;  and  the  solid 
foundation  of  this  unrivaled  opportunity  has 
been  the  existence  of  an  extensive  public 
domain  of  great  fertility  which  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  has  opened  freely 
to  the  men  of  all  nations.  How  this  public 
domain  was  acquired  and  disposed  of,  and 
how  it  has  shaped  American  institutions  and 
ideals,  is  an  essential  part  of  the  story  of 
American  democracy. 


ii 

It  was  mainly  a  series  of  fortunate  accidents 
that  placed  the  public  domain  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  federal  government  instead  of  the 
individual  states.  Originally,  the  title  to  the 
land  in  the  New  World  was  legally  understood 
to*  be  vested  in  the  king  by  right  of  discovery, 
and  the  original  grants  of  territory  were  made, 
in  most  cases,  to  individuals,  such  as  William 
Penn,  or  to  corporations,  such  as  the  Virginia 
Company,  or  the  Company  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,  who  undertook  to  establish  colonies 
within  the  limits  of  the  territory  granted  in 
each  case,  with  the  privilege  of  subletting  the 

144 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

land  within  their  respective  grants.  The  terms 
of  these  charter  grants  to  the  corporation  or 
to  the  individual  "proprietor"  therefore  came 
to  be  taken  as  defining  the  "boundaries"  of 
the  colonies  which  were  established  within 
these  grants.  These  terms  were  sometimes 
extremely  ambiguous,  as  in  the  case  of  Vir- 
ginia, and  often  more  generous  than  was  in- 
tended. The  Connecticut  charter  defined  the 
limits  of  that  colony  as  extending  from  "Nar- 
ragansett  Bay  on  the  east  to  the  Southern 
Sea  on  the  west  part."  The  Carolina  pro- 
prietors were  given  the  territory  between  29° 
and  36°  30'  "as  far  as  the  South  Seas."  The 
territory  of  Virginia  was  defined  as  extending 
two  hundred  miles  on  either  side  of  Old  Point 
Comfort,  and  as  including  "all  that  space  and 
circuit  of  land  lying  from  the  seacoast  of  the 
precincts  aforesaid,  up  into  the  land  through- 
out from  sea  to  sea,  west  and  northwest." 

All  of  these  grants  were  made  in  -the  belief 
that  the  South  Sea  (Pacific)  was  not  very^  far 
away.  The  common  idea  was  that  a  way  to 
it  could  be  readily  found  by  following  up  the 
coast  rivers.  As  late  as  1689,  the  governor 
of  Virginia,  Sir  William  Berkeley,  still  had 
faith  "to  make  an  essay  to  do  his  Majesty  a 
memorable  service,  which  was  to  go  to  find 
out  the  East  India  Sea,"  by  sending  a  small 
expedition  up  the  James  River  and  across  the 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Blue  Ridge  Mountains.  As  time  passed,  the 
South  Sea  receded  into  the  far-distant  West, 
but  no  colony  was  willing  to  surrender  any 
of  the  territory  which  could  be  claimed  on  the 
basis  of  its  ancient  charter;  and  so  it  happened 
that  when  independence  was  proclaimed  in 
1776  many  colonies  still  maintained  extensive 
and  conflicting  claims  to  the  territory  beyond 
the  mountains  as  far  west  as  the  Pacific  Ocean. 
Fortunately,  the  small  colonies  refused  to 
approve  the  Articles  of  Confederation  until 
these  claims  were  abandoned,  which  the  large 
colonies  finally  agreed  to;  and  thus  it  hap- 
pened that  when  independence  was  finally 
recognized  in  1783,  the  western  limits  of  the 
thirteen  states  did  not  extend  beyond  the 
Alleghany  Mountains,  while  the  immense 
stretches  of  rich  prairie  and  woodland  from 
the  Alleghanies  to  the  Mississippi  and  from 
the  Spanish  province  of  Florida  to  the  Great 
Lakes — an  area  of  about  four  hundred  thou- 
sand square  miles — became  the  public  domain 
of  the  federal  government. 

To  most  men  of  that  age  this  immense 
hinterland  seemed  adequate  for  an  indefinite 
future;  the  hope  of  adding  anything  to  it 
would  have  been  regarded  as  visionary  in 
face  of  the  immediate  problem  of  defending 
it  against  Spanish  or  French  or  English  ag- 
gression. But  the  extraordinary  good  fort- 

146 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

une  of  the  United  States  began  early  and 
has  lasted  long.  In  1803  President  Jefferson 
sent  James  Monroe  to  France  to  assist  Robert 
R.  Livingston  in  inducing  the  French  govern- 
ment to  cede  New  Orleans  and  West  Florida, 
in  order  that  the  United  States  might  be 
assured  of  free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi. 
He  had  not  much  hope  of  succeeding  in  achiev- 
ing even  this  modest  cession,  and  Livingston's 
surprise  can  be  imagined  when,  on  the  nth 
of  .April,  Napoleon's  Minister,  Talleyrand, 
suddenly  offered  to  sell  the  entire  province 
of  Louisiana.  A  gift  of  this  sort  could  not 
be  refused;  the  sale  was  early  concluded 
and  the  whole  province  of  Louisiana  was 
added  to  the  territory  of  the  United  States. 
The  territory  thus  added  to  the  public  domain 
comprised  the  whole  west  bank  of  the  Missis- 
sippi (including  those  parts  of  it  for  many 
years  claimed  by  Great  Britain,  but  finally 
conceded  to  the  United  States),  its  western 
limits  marked  by  a  line  beginning  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Sabine  River  on  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  running  irregularly  north  and  west 
to  the  42°  north  latitude,  and  thence  west  to 
the  Pacific.  The  extent  of  the  cession  was 
approximately  1,182,752  square  miles  —  an 
area  of  756,961,280  acres,  acquired  at  a  cost 
of  a  little  less  than  four  cents  per  acre. 

Once  possessed  of  the  province  of  Louisiana, 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  desire  to  acquire  possession  of  all  the  terri- 
tory from  sea  to  sea  was  bound  to  follow. 
This  ambition,  later  described  as  the  "Mani- 
fest Destiny"  of  the  United  States,  was  real- 
ized within  the  brief  space  of  half  a  century. 
In  1819-21  East  and  West  Florida — an  area 
of  37,931,520  acres — was  purchased  from 
Spain  at  a  cost  of  about  seventeen  cents  per 
acre.  In  1846,  as  the  result  of  a  war  of  pure 
aggression,  it  must  be  confessed,  the  United 
States  took  from  Mexico  the  territory  com- 
prised in  the  present  states  of  California, 
Nevada,  Utah,  New  Mexico,  and  western 
Colorado  —  an  area  of  334,443,520  acres. 
From  Texas,  which,  having  won  its  inde- 
pendence from  Mexico,  became  a  state  in  the 
Union  in  1837,  the  federal  government,  in 
1850,  purchased  61,892,480  acres  at  a  cost  of 
•>  twenty  cents  per  acre;  and  in  1883  it  purchased 
from  Mexico,  at  a  cost  of  thirty-four  cents  per 
acre,  additional  territory  to  the  extent  of 
29,142,400  acres.  The  entire  public  domain 
of  the  United  States,  excluding  Alaska,  was 
thus  in  excess  of  two  million  square  miles,  or 
about  one  and  a  quarter  billion  acres. 


in 

Never  before  had  any  nation  so  splendid 
a  heritage  for  the  people.  „  What  would  the 

148 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

government  do  with  it?  Would  it  hold  the 
public  domain  in  trust  for  the  poor  and  the 
needy,  or,  yielding  to  political  intrigue,  barter 
it  away  to  the  land-jobber  and  allow  the 
common  man  to  take  care  of  himself?  In 
the  course  of  a  hundred  years  much  politics 
has  been  played  in  connection  with  the  public 
land,  some  men  have  made  fortunes  and  some 
have  lost  them,  there  has  been  corruption, 
there  has  been  an  almost  criminal  waste  of 
material  resources — forests  and  mines — to  the 
profit  of  great  corporations.  In  a  new  coun- 
try calling  for  hasty  development,  and  with 
resources  so  unlimited,  it  could  scarcely  have 
been  otherwise;  but  on  the  whole,  the  record 
of  the  government  in  disposing  of  the  public 
land  has  not  been  a  bad  one. 

It  is  partly  to  the  credit  of  the  government 
that  America  is,  as  yet  at  least,  a  nation  of 
small  freehold  landowners.  Even  in  colonial 
times  the  attempt  to  transplant  the  feudal 
system  of  land  tenure  to  this  country  was 
scarcely  successful.  The  founders  of  New 
England  from  the  very  first  gave  careful  at- 
tention to  the  distribution  of  the  land,  which 
was  granted  first  to  the  town  corporations  and 
by  them  allotted  in  small  farms  to  heads  of 
families.  As  the  common  ownership  by  the 
towns  disappeared,  the  land  passed  to  the 
settlers  in  freehold  tenure.  The  town  long 

149 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

retained  certain  "common  lands" — meadow 
or  woodland — of  which  there  are  survivals  to 
this  day,  such  as  the  famous  Boston  Common ; 
but  from  the  beginning  New  England  avoided 
all  forms  of  subject  tenures,  either  in  the  form 
of  perpetual  rents  paid  to  great  landowners 
or  in  the  form  of  "quit-rents"  paid  to  the 
state. 

The  provinces  outside  of  New  England  were 
not  so  fortunate.  Most  other  colonies  were 
originally  founded  by  individual  proprietors 
or  commercial  corporations  who  expected  to 
exploit  the  land  by  forms  of  subject  tenure 
familiar  in  the  Old  World.  In  Virginia,  for 
example,  after  the  dissolution  of  the  Virginia 
Company  in  1624,  lands  were  granted  only 
in  return  for  perpetual  "quit-rents"  paid  to 
the  colonial  government.  In  Pennsylvania 
"quit-rents"  were  paid  to  the  proprietor.  The 
same  was  true  in  Maryland  and  the  Caro- 
linas,  whose  original  proprietors  had  splendid 
schemes  for  transplanting  in  America  the 
feudal  system  of  landholding,  and  the  system 
of  class  distinction  based  upon  it,  with  which 
they  were  familiar  in  England. 

But  all  of  these  efforts  ultimately  failed. 
Land  was  so  plentiful  that  settlers  would  not 
come,  or  would  not  stay,  where  the  price  was 
high  or  the  conditions  of  tenure  unfavorable. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  German  immL 

150 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

grants  occupied  land  in  Pennsylvania  as 
"squatters."  Rather  than  pay  the  £10  or 
£15  per  100  acres  which  the  proprietor 
charged,  they  moved  southward  into  Mary- 
land where  land  sold  for  from  £2  to  £5  per 
100  acres.  Immigrants  avoided  New  York 
because  all  the  best  land  along  the  Hudson 
had  been  appropriated  by  wealthy  land- 
owners who  refused  to  grant  it  out  in  freehold 
tenures.  No  system  of  perpetual  rents  could 
long  endure  in  the  New  World  where  un- 
limited quantities  of  land  were  lying  unused 
for  the  want  of  men  to  develop  them.  The 
last  vestiges  of  the  colonial  system  of  subject 
tenantry,  which  had  been  most  effectively 
established  in  New  York  in  the  great  estates 
along  the  Hudson,  were  swept  away  as  a  re- 
sult of  the  famous  "Rent  Riots"  of  1846. 

The  federal  government  of  the  United 
States,  in  dealing  with  the  public  domain, 
never  attempted  to  establish  a  system  of 
subject  tenures;  but  in  the  first  period  after 
winning  independence  it  regarded  the  public 
lands  somewhat  in  the  light  of  a  financial 
asset.  The  government  was  desperately  poor, 
and  it  was  hoped  that  by  disposing  of  large 
tracts  of  Western  land  to  wealthy  men  or  to 
corporations  it  could  obtain  in  a  few  years 
money  enough  to  pay  its  debts.  With  this 
in  view,  the  government  of  the  Confederation 
11  151 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

sold,  in  October,  1781,  5,000,000  acres  in  the 
Ohio  country  to  the  Ohio  Company;  and  in 
May,  1788,  2,000,000  acres  more  were  sold 
to  John  Cleves  Symmes,  and  the  price  to  be 
paid  for  all  this  land  was  approximately  66^ 
cents  an  acre.  The  land  act  of  May  10,  1800, 
raised  the  price  to  $2  per  acre  and  permitted 
the  sale  of  land  to  individuals  in  lots  as  small 
as  320  acres  in  some  regions,  and  640  acres  in 
others. 

During  the  next  twenty  years  about  twenty 
million  acres  of  land  were  sold  under  the 
terms  of  this  act.  But  the  whole  system  of 
these  early  years  was  open  to  criti- 
cism. It  was  based  upon  the  mistaken 
idea  that  the  government  could,  or  ought  to, 
make  money  out  of  the  sale  of  its  land,  and 
this  idea  led  in  turn  to  a  method  of  sale  which 
favored  the  wealthy,  which  opened  the  door 
to  unscrupulous  politicians  and  land-jobbers, 
and  which,  accordingly,  discriminated  against 
the  actual  settlers,  who  were  required  to  buy 
more  land  than  they  needed  at  a  higher  price 
than  they  could  afford  to  pay. 

The  early  system  was  in  fact  gradually 
modified  and  ultimately  abandoned  alto- 
gether, and  in  the  successive  modifications  the 
guiding  principle  was  that  the  interests  and 
the  capacities  of  the  actual  settlers  ought  to 
be  considered  first  of  all,  without  reference 

152 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

to  the  desires  of  speculators  or  the  financial 
needs  of  the  government.  In  1820  the  price 
was  reduced  to  $1.25  per  acre,  the  minimum 
offered  for  sale  was  reduced  to  80  acres,  and 
in  1832  was  again  reduced  to  40  acres.  Mean- 
time, in  1801,  a  practice  had  been  adopted 
which  was  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the 
actual  settlers.  It  often  happened  that  poor 
men,  who  were  not  able  or  not  willing  to  pay 
the  price  asked,  would  take  possession  without 
legal  right  of  unoccupied  land  which  had  not 
yet  been  offered  for  sale.  When  the  land  so 
occupied  was  finally  sold,  the  actual  settler— 
the  "squatter" —could  be  removed.  But 
from  about  1801  it  came  to  be  the  practice  to 
give  to  the  "squatter"  the  first  right  to  buy 
the  land  which  he  had  taken  possession  of,  in 
preference  to  all  others.  This  was  the  be- 
ginning of  the  so-called  right  of  "pre-emp- 
tion." What  the  rights  of  "pre-emption,"  as 
defined  by  various  laws  passed  between  1801 
and  1841,  amounted  to  was  this:  Any  citizen 
might  "pre-empt"  the  title  to  a  certain 
amount  of  unoccupied  land  (40  acres  was  the 
minimum  after  1832)  by  actual  residence  in 
a  dwelling  upon  the  land,  and  by  cultivating 
a  certain  portion  of  it.  If  he  fulfilled  these 
conditions  he  was  to  have  a  certain  number 
of  years  in  which  to  complete  the  title  by 
paying  for  the  land,  and  during  that  term  of 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

years  no  one  could  evict  him  or  acquire  a  title 
that  would  be  valid  against  his. 

This  was  a  fairly  liberal  policy,  for  it  per- 
mitted men  without  any  ready  money  to  get 
possession  of  farms  without  any  formality 
whatever,  and  to  pay  for  them  afterward.  But 
as  time  passed  many  people  began  to  ask  a 
very  sensible  question.  Since  the  land  belongs 
to  the  government,  they  said,  and  since  the 
government  belongs  to  the  people,  why  should 
the  people  pay  itself  for  its  own  land?  And 
especially  since  there  is  so  much  land  lying 
waste  for  the  want  of  men  to  work  it,  and 
many  poor  people  wanting  nothing  better 
than  a  chance  to  work  it,  why  should  a  poor 
man  be  asked  to  pay  anything  for  a  small 
farm  of  50  or  80  or  160  acres?  This  ques- 
tion became  a  national  political  issue  in 
1852,  when  the  Free  Soil  party  included  the 
following  statement  in  its  declaration  of 
principles: 

That  the  Public  Lands  of  the  United  States  belong 
to  the  people,  and  should  not  be  sold  to  individuals, 
nor  granted  to  corporations,  but  should  be  held  as  a 
sacred  trust  for  the  benefit  of  the  people,  and  should 
be  granted  in  limited  quantities,  free  of  cost,  to  land- 
less settlers. 

After  ten  years  of  agitation  this  principle 
was  finally  embodied  in  what  is  known  as  the 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

"Homestead  Law"  of  May  20,  1862.  The 
essential  terms  of  this  law,  which  might  well 
be  called  the  poor  man's  charter  of  indepen- 
dence, deserve  to  be  often  recalled,  and  are 
well  worth  recording: 

That  any  man  who  is  the  head  of  a  family,  or  who 
has  arrived  at  the  age  of  twenty-one  years,  and  is  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States,  or  who  shall  have  filed 
his  declaration  of  intentions  to  become  such  .  .  . 
shall  ...  be  entitled  to  enter  one-quarter  section  (160 
acres)  or  a  less  quantity  of  unappropriated  public 
land,  upon  which  said  person  may  have  filed  a  pre- 
emption claim,  or  which  may,  at  the  time  the  applica- 
tion is  made,  be  subject  to  pre-emption  at  $1.25,  or 
less,  per  acre.  Provided,  however,  that  no  certificate 
shall  be  given  or  patent  issued  therefor  until  the  ex- 
piration of  five  years  from  the  date  of  such  entry; 
and  if,  at  the  expiration  of  such  time,  or  at  any  time 
within  two  years  thereafter,  the  person  making  such 
entry  (or  his  heirs)  shall  prove  by  two  credible  witnesses 
that  he  (or  his  heirs)  has  resided  upon  or  cultivated  the 
same  for  the  term  of  five  years  immediately  succeeding 
the  time  of  filing  the  affidavit  aforesaid,  and  shall 
make  affidavit  that  no  part  of  the  said  land  has  been 
alienated,  and  that  he  has  borne  true  allegiance  to  the 
government  of  the  United  States;  then,  in  that  case, 
he  (or  his  heirs)  shall  be  entitled  to  a  patent,  as  in 
other  cases  provided  by  law. 

Under  the  terms  of  this  law,  entries  were  made, 
during  the  forty-two  years  immediately  fol- 
lowing its  passage,  for  a  total  of  96,495,030 
acres  of  land. 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

It  has  been  estimated  by  Donaldson  that 
the  public  domain  acquired  up  to  the  year 
1880  was  about  1,849,072,587  acres,  of  which 
the  cost  to  the  government,  including  the 
expense  of  surveys,  administration,  and  sale, 
was  about  18  cents  an  acre.  Prior  to  June  30, 
1880,  something  more  than  500,000,000  acres 
had  been  disposed  of,  in  various  ways,  at  an 
average  price  of  about  36  cents  an  acre.  Ac- 
cording to  the  report  of  the  Public  Land  Com- 
mission of  1905,  the  government  had,  up  to 
July  i,  1904,  alienated  by  sale  and  gift  a  total 
of  967,667,449  acres.  Of  this  amount,  276,- 
558,218  acres  were  sold  for  cash;  96,495,030 
acres  were  granted  under  the  terms  of  the 
Homestead  Act ;  1 1 7,550,292  acres  were  granted 
to  railroads;  114,502,528  acres  were  classed  as 
forest  reserves;  69,058,443  acres  were  granted 
to  states  and  territories  for  school  purposes; 
65,739,264  acres  were  granted  as  "swamp 
lands."  What  proportion  of  the  alienated 
lands  passed  to  poor  men  it  is  impossible  to 
say,  for  under  all  the  acts  for  the  disposal 
of  the  public  lands,  even  those,  such  as  the 
Homestead  Act,  which  were  designed  ex- 
clusively for  bonafide  farmers,  the  land-jobber 
has  by  fraud  or  otherwise  found  it  possible 
to  play  his  game.  But  at  all  events  through- 
out the  nineteenth  century,  especially  after 
about  1820  and  until  about  1890,  it  was 

156 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

always  possible  for  any  man,  however  poor, 
to  enter  the  class  of  landed  proprietors. 


IV 

The  abundance  of  free  land  is  the  obvious 
explanation  of  the  rapid  increase  in  popula- 
tion in  America,  .and  hence  of  the  swiftness 
with  which  the  whole  continent  has  been  oc- 
cupied and  subdued  to  the  uses  of  man.  No 
such  rapid  increase  in  population  had  ever 
been  known  in  Europe.  The  population  of 
England  in  1685  was  about  five  million;  in 
1801  it  was  about  nine  million;  that  is  to  say, 
the  population  of  England  had  not  doubled 
once  in  a  hundred  and  sixteen  years.  But 
long  before  Malthus  had  formulated  his 
famous  law  of  population,  which  was  based 
upon  the  assumption  that  under  favorable 
conditions  of  subsistence  population  would 
increase  in  a  geometrical  progression,  Benja- 
min Franklin  had  observed  that  this  was  pre- 
cisely the  case  in  America. 

It  was  in  1751  that  Franklin  published  a 
pamphlet  on  the  Increase  of  Mankind  and  the 
Peopling  of  Countries,  in  which  he  estimated 
that  the  population  in  the  Colonies  doubled 
every  twenty  years.  And  he  predicted  that 
this  rate  of  increase  would  continue  indefinite- 
ly, so  that  within  another  hundred  years  there 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

would  be  more  English-speaking  people  in 
North  America  than  in  old  England.  The 
fundamental  explanation  for  this  unprece- 
dented phenomenon,  as  Franklin  clearly  saw, 
was  the  presence  of  unlimited  quantities  of 
land  easily  obtained. 

Land  being  thus  plenty  in  America,  and  so  cheap 
as  that  a  laboring  man,  that  understands  Husbandry, 
can  in  a  short  time  save  money  enough  to  purchase  a 
piece  of  new  land  sufficient  for  a  plantation,  whereon 
he  may  subsist  a  family,  such  are  not  afraid  to  marry; 
for,  if  they  look  far  enough  forward  to  consider  how 
their  children,  when  grown  up,  are  to  be  provided  for, 
they  see  that  more  land  is  to  be  had  at  rates  equally 
easy,  all  circumstances  considered. 

Hence  marriages  in  America  are  more  general  and 
more  generally  early  than  in  Europe.  And  if  it  is 
reckoned  there,  that  there  is  but  one  marriage  per 
Annum  among  100  persons,  perhaps  we  may  here 
reckon  2;  and  if  in  Europe  they  have  but  4  births  to 
a  marriage  (many  of  their  marriages  being  late),  we 
may  here  reckon  8,  of  which,  if  one-half  grow  up,  and 
our  marriages  are  made,  reckoning  one  with  another  at 
20  years  of  age,  our  people  must  at  least  be  doubled 
every  20  years. 

But  notwithstanding  this  increase,  so  vast  is  the 
territory  of  North  America,  that  it  will  require  many 
ages  to  settle  it  fully;  and  till  it  is  fully  settled,  labor 
will  never  be  cheap  here,  where  no  man  continues  long 
a  laborer  for  others,  but  gets  a  plantation  of  his  own; 
no  man  continues  long  a  journeyman  to  a  trade,  but 
goes  among  those  new  settlers  and  sets  up  for  him- 
self, etc. 

158 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

The  conditions  which  Franklin  described 
in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  have 
continued  to  exist  until  very  recently.  And 
these  are  the  conditions  which  therefore  ex- 
plain the  unprecedented  rapidity  with  which 
the  people  of  the  United  States  have  trans- 
formed this  immense  wilderness  into  prosper- 
ous and  civilized  communities. 

This  expansive  movement  of  the  people 
westward  has  gone  steadily  on  from  colonial 
days;  decade  by  decade,  year  by  year,  the 
frontier  line  of  settlement,  where  the  white 
man  encountered  the  red  man  and  savagery 
receded  before  a  crude  and  primitive  civili- 
zation, has  crept  like  the  edge  of  an  incoming 
tide  toward  the  Pacific.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  the  frontier  line  was  the  Atlantic 
tidewater  regions,  and  the  frontiersmen  of 
that  age  were  the  Puritans  of  New  England, 
the  Cavaliers  and  Redemptioners  of  Virginia, 
and  the  Dutch  and  Swedes  and  English 
Quakers  of  the  Middle  colonies.  According 
to  the  census  of  1790  the  settled  area  was 
limited  by  the  Alleghanies;  but  beyond  the 
map  was  dotted  by  little  communities  in 
Kentucky  and  Tennessee,  and  on  the  upper 
Ohio  River.  By  1825  the  frontier  had  been 
pushed  forward  to  the  Mississippi  River,  and 
the  settled  area  included  Ohio,  southern 
Indiana  and  Illinois,  Kentucky  and  Ten- 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

nessee.  Thirty  years  later  the  frontier  was 
roughly  the  Missouri  River,  and  settlers  were 
pushing  into  eastern  Kansas  and  Nebraska 
and  northward  into  Wisconsin  and  Minne- 
sota, while  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California 
had  created  a  far-western  frontier  on  the 
Pacific  Coast.  The  census  of  1880  revealed 
an  irregular  frontier  line  running  in  northern 
Wisconsin  and  Minnesota,  with  settlements 
along  the  rivers  in  Dakota,  Nebraska,  and 
Kansas,  in  Colorado  and  California. 

The  story  of  this  steady  advance  across 
the  continent  is  the  great  epic  of  American 
history — a  New  World  crusade  for  the  con- 
quest of  the  wilderness.  It  is  a  story  fasci- 
nating in  its  variety,  richly  colored  by  the 
romance  of  adventure  and  of  hazardous  en- 
terprises, never  lacking  in  masterly  leaders, 
in  eccentric  characters,  or  bizarre  incident — a 
story  of  human  endeavor,  of  ends  achieved  by 
ruthless  strength  and  harsh  cruelties,  by  hu- 
mane and  generous  actions,  by  heroic  deeds 
and  misfortunes  nobly  endured.  But  there 
is  more  in  this  story  than  a  tale  of  adventure ; 
rightly  told,  it  will  reveal  the  secret  of  Amer- 
ican history — the  persistence  of  democratic 
ideals  which  flourish  in  the  simple  and  prim- 
itive conditions  of  a  frontier  society. 

The  influence  upon  the  United  States  of 
this  century  of  expansion  westward,  involving 

1 60 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in  every  generation  a  return  to  simple  and 
primitive  conditions  of  life,  can  be  more  easily 
understood  if  we  try  to  imagine  what  would 
have  happened  if  the  Pacific  had  in  fact,  as 
the  first  settlers  imagined,  washed  the  western 
slopes  of  the  Alleghanies.  In  that  case,  the 
United  States,  confined  to  the  Atlantic  coast 
regions,  would  no  doubt  have  rapidly  come 
to  be  a  thickly  populated  country,  with  little 
free  land,  with  a  consequent  rapid  develop- 
ment of  industrial  and  social  conditions  simi- 
lar to  those  in  European  countries.  Economic 
dependence  upon  Europe  would  have  involved 
close  political  relations,  and  close  political  re- 
lations would  have  implied  a  similar  if  not  an 
imitated  culture.  The  United  States  never 
could  have  turned  its  back  on  the  Old  World, 
and  its  ideas  and  its  ideals  would  have  been 
borrowed  from  London  and  Paris. 

This  has,  indeed,  been  true  in  some  measure 
of  the  Atlantic  coast  states,  and  particularly 
of  New  England.  To  this  day  Bostonians 
have  what  Americans  call  an  "English  ac- 
cent," and  European  travelers  have  always 
found  Boston  more  English  than  any  other 
part  of  America,  just  as  they  have  always 
found  the  entire  Atlantic  coast  region  more 
European  than  the  country  west  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies. It  was  the  expansion  of  population 
into  the  Mississippi  Valley  that  emancipated 

161 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  United  States  from  Europe.  As  the  center 
of  population  moved  westward  the  center  of 
political  power  moved  westward.  New  Eng- 
land and  the  Atlantic  states  lost  their  pre- 
dominant influence,  and  the  course  of  Amer- 
ican history  and  the  character  of  American 
society  were  more  and  more  determined  by 
the  interests  and  the  ideas  of  a  frontier  society. 
For  a  hundred  years  American  history  has 
witnessed  the  repetition,  in  each  generation, 
of  the  same  process ;  in  each  generation  a  re- 
turn to  frontier  conditions  in  a  new  area, 
involving,  within  this  area,  the  oft-repeated 
social  evolution  from  the  most  primitive  to 
the  most  advanced  types  of  industrial  society. 
Many  years  ago  Prof.  Frederick  J.  Turner, 
himself  a  product  of  the  Middle  West,  pointed 
out  in  a  brilliant  pamphlet  the  significance 
of  the  frontier  on  American  history. 

In  the  case  of  most  nations  the  development  has 
occurred  in  a  limited  area;  and  if  the  nation  has  ex- 
panded, it  has  met  other  growing  peoples  whom  it 
has  conquered.  But  in  the  case  of  the  United  States 
we  have  a  different  phenomenon.  Limiting  our  atten- 
tion to  the  Atlantic  coast,  we  have  the  familiar  phenom- 
enon of  the  evolution  of  institutions  in  a  limited  area, 
such  as  the  rise  of  representative  government;  the 
differentiation  of  simple  colonial  governments  into 
complex  organs;  the  progress  of  primitive  industrial 
society,  without  division  of  labor,  up  to  manufacturing 
civilization.  But  we  have  in  addition  to  this  a  recur- 

162 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

rence  of  the  process  of  evolution  in  each  Western  area 
reached  in  the  process  of  expansion.  Thus  American 
development  has  exhibited  not  merely  advance  along 
a  single  line,  but  a  return  to  primitive  conditions  on 
a  continually  advancing  frontier  line,  and  a  new  de- 
velopment for  that  area.  American  social  development 
has  been  continually  beginning  over  again  on  the 
frontier.  This  perennial  rebirth,  this  fluidity  of  Amer- 
ican life,  this  expansion  westward  with  its  new  oppor- 
tunities, its  continuous  touch  with  the  simplicity  of 
primitive  society,  furnish  the  forces  dominating  Amer- 
ican character. 

But  let  us  picture  a  little  more  in  detail 
this  "perennial  rebirth,"  this  continual  re- 
newal of  the  process  of  social  evolution.  Pro- 
fessor Turner  himself  quotes  the  following  ex- 
tract from  Peck's  New  Guide  to  the  West,  which 
was  published  in  1837: 

Generally,  in  all  Western  settlements,  three  classes, 
like  the  waves  of  the  ocean,  have  rolled  one  after 
another.  First  comes  the  pioneer,  who  depends  for 
the  subsistence  of  his  family  chiefly  upon  the  natural 
growth  of  vegetation,  called  the  "  range,"  and  the  pro- 
ceeds of  hunting.  His  implements  of  agriculture  are 
rude,  chiefly  of  his  own  make,  and  his  efforts  directed 
chiefly  to  a  crop  of  corn  and  a  "truck-patch."  ...  A 
log  cabin,  and,  occasionally,  a  stable  and  a  corn-crib, 
and  a  field  of  a  dozen  acres  .  .  .  are  enough  for  his  oc- 
cupancy. It  is  quite  immaterial  whether  he  ever  be- 
comes the  owner  of  the  soil.  He  is  the  occupant  for 
the  time  being,  pays  no  rent,  and  feels  as  independent 
as  the  "lord  of  the  manor."  With  a  horse,  cow,  and 

163 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

one  or  two  breeders  of  swine,  he  strikes  into  the  woods 
with  his  family,  and  becomes  the  founder  of  a  new 
county,  or  perhaps  state.  He  builds  his  cabin,  gathers 
around  him  a  few  other  families  of  similar  tastes  and 
habits,  and  occupies  till  the  range  is  somewhat  sub- 
dued, and  hunting  a  little  precarious,  or,  which  is  more 
frequently  the  case,  till  the  neighbors  crowd  around, 
roads,  bridges,  and  fields  annoy  him,  and  he  lacks 
elbow  room.  The  pre-emption  law  allows  him  to  dis- 
pose of  his  cabin  and  corn-field  to  the  next  class  of 
emigrants;  and  to  employ  his  own  figure,  he  "breaks 
for  the  high  timber,"  "clears  out  for  the  new  purchase/' 
or  migrates  to  Arkansas  or  Texas,  to  work  the  same 
process  over. 

The  next  class  of  emigrants  purchase  the  land,  add 
field  to  field,  clear  out  the  roads,  throw  rough  bridges 
over  the  streams,  put  up  hewn  log  houses  with  glass 
windows  and  brick  or  stone  chimneys,  occasionally 
plant  orchards,  build  mills,  school-houses,  court-houses, 
etc.,  and  exhibit  the  picture  and  forms  of  plain,  frugal, 
civilized  life. 

Another  wave  rolls  on.  The  men  of  capital  and 
enterprise  come.  The  settler  is  ready  to  sell  out  and 
take  the  advantage  of  the  rise  in  property,  push  farther 
into  the  interior,  and  become,  himself,  a  man  of  capital 
and  enterprise  in  turn.  The  small  village  rises  to  a 
spacious  town  or  city;  substantial  edifices  of  brick, 
extensive  fields,  orchards,  gardens,  colleges,  and 
churches  are  seen.  Broadcloths,  silks,  leghorns,  crapes, 
and  all  the  refinements,  luxuries,  elegancies,  frivolities, 
and  fashions  are  in  vogue.  Thus  wave  after  wave  is 
rolling  westward;  the  real  Eldorado  is  still  farther 
on.  .  .  . 

The  writer  has  traveled  much  among  the  first  class, 
the  real  pioneers.  He  has  lived  many  years  in  connec- 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

tion  with  the  second  grade;  and  now  the  third  wave  is 
sweeping  over  large  districts  of  Indiana,  Illinois,  and 
Missouri.  Migration  has  become  almost  a  habit  in 
the  West.  Hundreds  of  men  can  be  found,  not 
over  fifty  years  of  age,  who  have  settled  for  the  fourth, 
fifth,  or  sixth  time  on  a  new  spot.  To  sell  out  and 
remove  only  a  few  hundred  miles  makes  up  a  portion 
of  the  variety  of  backwoods  life  and  manners. 


This  description,  allowing  for  regional  dif- 
ferences in  the  physical  character  of  the  coun- 
try, represents  in  a  general  way  a  process 
which  has  been  going  on  for  a  hundred  years 
throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  United 
States.  It  is  this  "perennial  rebirth,"  this 
continual  renewal  of  the  process  of  social 
evolution,  this  continual  mobility  of  the  popu- 
lation, that  has  kept  America  from  growing 
prematurely  old.  This  it  is  which  has  broken 
sectional  barriers  and  made  impossible  the 
establishment  of  rigid  class  distinctions,  which 
has  developed  a  composite  American  national 
character,  which  has  enabled  Americans  to 
retain  to  so  great  a  degree  the  simplicity  of 
their  original  political  institutions  and  in  such 
full  measure  their  faith  in  democracy. 

"In  1789  the  states  were  the  creators  of  the 
federal  government;  in  1861  the  federal  gov- 
ernment was  the  creator  of  a  large  majority 
of  the  states. "  This  concise  statement  re- 
veals one  very  fundamental  influence  which 

165 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Western  expansion  had  upon  the  history  of 
the  United  States.  It  did  more  than  any 
other  single  thing  to  weaken  the  old  sentiment 
of  state  sovereignty  and  to  strengthen  the 
sentiment  of  nationalism.  The  men  who 
migrated  from  Virginia  and  Pennsylvania  and 
Massachusetts  into  the  upper  Ohio  Valley 
very  rapidly  lost  touch  with  the  states  from 
which  they  had  come.  They  perhaps  retained 
for  a  time  a  certain  kindly  recollection  of  the 
old  home,  but  the  sense  of  loyalty  to  the 
state  inevitably  disappeared.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  had  bought  their  land  from  the 
federal  government,  they  lived  for  some  years 
in  the  "Territory  of  Ohio,"  a  temporary  gov- 
ernment controlled  by  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States,  and  when  the  territory  of  Ohio 
was  admitted  as  a  state  in  the  Union  it  was 
by  act  of  the  federal  government.  In  a  very 
real  sense  the  state  of  Ohio  was  the  creature 
of  the  federal  government,  and  it  was  the 
same  with  all  of  the  new  states  admitted  to 
the  Union  after  1789. 

The  new  Western  states  were  not  only  the 
creatures  of  the  federal  government,  they  nat- 
urally turned  to  the  federal  government  for 
aid  in  many  things.  One  primary  need  of  the 
Western  country  was  better  means  of  trans- 
portation. As  soon  as  they  had  a  surplus 
of  food  products  they  needed  to  have  access 

166 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

to  the  Eastern  markets;  and,  therefore,  the 
West  demanded  the  construction  of  better 
roads,  and  of  canals,  and,  later,  of  railroads- 
enterprises  which  could  be  carried  through 
only  by  the  aid  of  the  federal  government 
itself.  Furthermore,  the  Western  agricultural 
states  required  manufactured  commodities, 
and  the  Eastern  states,  in  order  to  meet  this 
demand,  and  also  because  their  less  fertile 
lands  could  not  compete  successfully  with  the 
West,  began  to  develop  manufactures.  In 
order  to  protect  these  "infant  industries" 
against  foreign  competition,  the  Middle  and 
New  England  states  wanted  a  system  of  tariff 
duties  laid  on  importation  from  abroad. 
Through  a  system  of  tariffs  and  a  system  of 
"Internal  Improvements,"  the  federal  gov- 
ernment exercised  a  powerful  influence  in 
developing  the  economic  life  of  the  country 
and  thereby  acquired  a  political  power  and 
prestige  undreamed  of  by  the  framers  of  the 
Constitution. 

The  expansion  of  population  into  the  West- 
ern country  contributed  also  in  a  less  obvious 
but  more  profound  way  to  the  development 
of  a  feeling  of  nationality.  In  the  Western 
country  sectional  differences  and  jealousies 
tended  to  disappear  through  the  mingling  of 
people  from  different  sections.  The  people 
who  made  the  state  of  Ohio  came  chiefly  from 
12  167 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania,  and  Virginia. 
These  men  and  women,  thrown  together  in 
the  equalizing  conditions  of  a  primitive  wilder- 
ness society,  rapidly  lost  those  characteristics 
that  made  them  peculiar.  It  was  soon  found 
that  Puritan  or  Quaker,  German  Mennonite 
or  Virginia  Episcopalians  were  all  very  human 
persons  when  it  came  to  clearing  the  forest, 
planting  corn,  fighting  the  Indians,  and  pre- 
serving a  decent  amount  of  law  and  order. 
In  this  mingling  of  people  from  the  older 
regions,  local  exclusiveness  and  suspicion  nec- 
essarily gave  way  to  a  more  national,  even  a 
more  catholic  attitude  of  mind — an  effect 
greatly  strengthened  by  the  large  influx  of 
foreign  immigrants  after  1820.  When  the 
mobility  of  population  was  always  so  great, 
the  strange  face,  the  odd  speech,  the  curious 
custom  of  dress,  and  the  unaccustomed  re- 
ligious faith  ceased  to  be  a  matter  of  comment 
or  concern.  The  term  "outlandish"  lost  its 
significance,  and  the  term  "stranger,"  among 
primitive  peoples  identical  with  "enemy,"  be- 
came thoughout  the  West  a  common  form  of 
friendly  salutation. 

The  Westerner  was  crude  and  uncultivated, 
ignorant  of  books,  and  lacking  in  the  niceties 
and  refinements  of  life;  but  his  varied  ex- 
perience of  men  and  places,  his  close  contact 
with  the  hard  realities  of  life,  emancipated 

168 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

t  him  from  the  provincialism  that  thrives  among 
I  men  who  live  and  die  in  the  same  village,  or 
those  whose  habitual  intercourse  is  with  people 
j  of  their  own  class.  In  spite  of  its  primitive 
crudity,  the  flux  and  mobility  of  life  in  the 
West  developed  a  certain  restless  energy,  an 
inventive  resourcefulness,  a  flexibility  of  mind, 
a  certain  humane  tolerance,  and  a  kind  of 
genial  acceptance  of  ill  and  good  fortune 
which  form  the  basis  of  that  national  char- 
acter which  is  called  America. 

Professor  Turner  has  described  the  intel- 
lectual qualities  that  were  developed  by  the 
primitive  life  of  the  West  in  words  that  are 
well  worth  quoting: 

From  the  conditions  of  frontier  life  came  intellectual 
traits  of  profound  importance.  The  works  of  travelers 
from  colonial  days  onward  describe  certain  common 
traits,  and  these  traits  have,  while  softening  down, 
still  persisted  as  survivals  in  the  place  of  their  origin, 
even  when  higher  social  organizations  succeeded.  The 
result  is  that  to  the  frontier  the  American  intellect 
owes  its  striking  characteristics.  That  coarseness  and 
strength  combined  with  acuteness  and  inquisitiveness; 
that  practical  inventive  turn  of  mind,  quick  to  find 
expedients;  that  masterful  grasp  of  material  things, 
lacking  in  the  artistic,  but  powerful  to  effect  great 
ends;  that  restless,  nervous  energy;  that  dominant  in- 
dividualism, working  for  good  and  for  evil;  and  withal 
that  buoyancy  and  exuberance  which  comes  with  free- 
dom— these  are  traits  of  the  frontier,  or  traits  called  out 
elsewhere  because  of  the  existence  of  the  frontier. 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

No  trait  was  more  essential  to  success  in 
the  primitive  frontier  life  of  the  West  than 
individual  initiative.  The  man  who  went 
West  to  grow  up  with  the  country  discovered 
that  the  process  was  not  a  passive  one.  He 
had  to  pit  his  strength  and  his  resourcefulness 
against  the  stubborn  resistance  and  inertia 
of  the  uncleared  forest  or  the  untilled  prairie. 
There  was  no  paternal  government  to  fall 
back  upon,  and  no  settled  social  custom  to 
direct  or  to  restrain  him.  At  every  step  he 
must  decide  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it; 
and  upon  these  decisions  his  success  or  failure 
in  acquiring  the  bare  necessities  of  life,  and 
often  in  preserving  life  itself,  depended.  For 
a  hundred  years,  life  under  frontier  conditions 
has  developed  this  trait  of  individual  initiative 
until  it  has  become  ingrained  in  the  character 
of  the  people. 

In  developing  the  spirit  of  individual  initi- 
ative and  self-confidence,  the  frontier  gave  to 
men  a  strong  sense  of  individual  liberty.  Per- 
sonal initiative  implies  freedom  of  action,  and 
uncontrolled  freedom  easily  passes  over  into 
unrestrained  license.  The  frontiersman,  freed 
from  external  restraint  of  government  or  social 
convention,  found,  nevertheless,  that  the  harsh 
facts  of  nature  required  a  conformity  of  their 
own.  He  decided  for  himself  what  to  do,  and 
how  to  do  it;  but  if  he  decided  wrong,_star- 

170 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

vation  or  the  tomahawk  of  the  savage  might 
end  his  liberty  with  his  life.  The  frontiers- 
man was  free  to  do  as  he  pleased — but  he  was 
held  responsible  for  what  it  was  that  he  pleased 
to  do.  In  the  harsh  school  of  frontier  ex- 
perience only  the  fit  could  survive;  and  thus 
the  strong  sense  of  individual  liberty  which  is 
so  ingrained  in  American  character  is  checked 
by  an  ever-present  realization  of  the  necessity 
of  conforming  to  the  realities  of  existence. 

The  long  period  of  relatively  simple  frontier 
conditions  has  also  preserved  and  strengthened 
the  idea  of  equality.  It  was  not  that  in  the 
frontier  of  the  first  pioneers,  or  in  the  simple 
agricultural  communities  that  were  later  es- 
tablished, all  men  appeared  to  be  alike,  or 
equal  in  power  or  virtue.  On  the  contrary,  in 
these  communities  the  natural  inequalities  be- 
tween men  were  thrown  into  strong  relief. 
No  man  could  avoid  the  merciless,  if  friendly, 
curiosity  of  his  neighbors,  or  long  pass  for 
anything  except  what  he  was.  Pretense  was 
useless;  birth  or  polite  learning  or  social  ac- 
complishment counted  for  nothing.  What 
counted  was  a  man's  resourcefulness,  his  suc- 
cess in  doing  what  had  to  be  done,  and  what 
every  one  was  doing.  And  the  able  man- 
as  hunter  or  Indian-fighter,  as  farmer  or  wood- 
man or  mechanic,  as  composer  of  quarrels,  or 
as  leader  of  men — won  whatever  recognition 

171 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

his  ability  entitled  him  to.  The  idea  of 
equality  which  the  frontier  developed  was  not 
an  equality  of  rewards  or  of  possessions;  it 
was  the  idea  of  equality  of  opportunity  and 
of  reward  according  to  merit. 

The  disposition  to  take  a  man  for  what  he 
is,  without  regard  to  his  rank  or  title,  a  trait 
which  American  national  character  owes  so 
largely  to  frontier  conditions,  has  been  noted 
by  James  Bryce  in  his  great  book,  The  Amer- 
ican Commonwealth.  The  second  charm  of 
American  life,  he  says — 

is  one  which  some  Europeans  will  smile  at.  It  is  social 
equality.  To  many  Europeans  the  word  has  an  odious 
sound.  It  suggests  a  dirty  fellow  in  a  blouse  elbowing 
his  betters  in  a  crowd,  or  an  ill-conditioned  villager 
shaking  his  fist  at  the  parson  and  the  squire;  or,  at 
any  rate,  it  suggests  obtrusiveness  and  bad  manners. 
The  exact  contrary  is  the  truth.  Equality  improves 
manners,  for  it  strengthens  the  basis  of  all  good  man- 
ners, respect  for  other  men  and  women  simply  as  men 
and  women,  irrespective  of  their  station  in  life.  Social 
equality  has  grown  so  naturally  out  of  the  circumstances 
of  the  country,  has  been  so  long  established  and  is  so 
ungrudgingly  admitted,  that  all  excuse  for  obtrusive- 
ness  has  disappeared.  People  meet  on  a  simple  and 
natural  footing,  with  more  frankness  and  ease  than  is 
possible  in  countries  where  every  one  is  either  looking 
up  or  looking  down.  There  is  no  servility  on  the  part 
of  the  humbler,  no  condescension  on  the  part  of  the 
more  highly  placed,  nor  is  there  even  that  sort  of  scru- 
pulously polite  coldness  which  one  might  think  they 

172 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

would  adopt  in  order  to  preserve  their  dignity.  They 
have  no  cause  to  fear  for  their  dignity,  so  long  as  they 
do  not  themselves  forget  it.  And  the  fact  that  your 
shoemaker  or  your  factory  hand  addresses  his  employer 
as  an  equal  does  not  prevent  him  from  showing  all 
the  respect  to  which  any  one  may  be  entitled  on  the 
score  of  birth  or  education  or  eminence  in  any  walk 
of  life. 

Together  with  this  sense  of  equality  be- 
tween men,  the  frontier  also  developed,  often 
underneath  a  harsh  exterior,  a  humane  and 
kindly  fellow-feeling,  which  Mr.  Bryce  has 
noted  as  a  distinguishing  American  trait: 

I  come  last  to  the  character  and  ways  of  the  Amer- 
icans themselves  in  which  there  is  a  certain  charm, 
hard  to  convey  by  description,  but  felt  almost  as  soon 
as  one  sets  foot  on  their  shore,  and  felt  constantly 
thereafter.  In  purely  business  relations  there  is  hard- 
ness, as  there  is  the  world  over.  Inefficiency  has  a 
very  short  shrift.  But  apart  from  these  relations  they 
are  a  kindly  people.  Good  nature,  heartiness,  a  readi- 
ness to  render  small  services  to  one  another,  an  assump- 
tion that  neighbors  in  the  country,  or  persons  thrown 
together  in  travel,  or  even  in  a  crowd,  were  meant  to 
be  friendly  rather  than  hostile  to  one  another,  seem 
to  be  everywhere  in  the  air  and  in  those  who  breathe  it. 
Sociability  is  the  rule,  isolation  and  moroseness  the 
rare  exception.  It  is  not  that  people  are  more  vivacious 
or  talkative  than  an  Englishman  expects  to  find  them, 
for  the  Western  man  is  often  taciturn  and  seldom 
wreathes  his  long  face  into  a  smile.  It  is  rather  that 
you  feel  that  the  man  next  you,  whether  silent  or  talka- 

173 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

tive,  does  not  mean  to  repel  intercourse,  or  convey  by 
his  manners  his  low  opinion  of  his  fellow-creatures. 
Everybody  seems  disposed  to  think  well  of  the  world 
and  its  inhabitants,  well  enough  at  least  to  wish  to 
be  on  easy  terms  with  them  and  serve  them  in  those 
little  things  whose  trouble  to  the  doer  is  small  in  pro- 
portion to  the  pleasure  they  give  to  the  receiver.  To 
help  others  is  better  recognized  as  a  duty  than  in 
Europe.  Nowhere  is  money  so  readily  given  for  any 
public  purpose.  .  .  .  People  seem  to  take  their  own  trou- 
bles more  lightly  than  they  do  in  Europe,  and  to  be 
more  indulgent  to  the  faults  by  which  troubles  are 
caused.  It  is  a  land  of  hope,  and  a  land  of  hope  is  a 
land  of  good  humor. 

America  is,  as  Mr.  Bryce  says,  "a  land  of 
hope";  and  that  it  is  so  has  been  largely  due 
to  the  boundless  possibilities  of  the  great  West. 
The  unlimited  resources  of  the  country,  and 
the  incredible  rapidity  with  which  they  have 
been  developed,  have  combined  to  give  to 
the  American  character  a  strain  of  buoyant 
optimism.  To  the  American  sense  of  liberty 
and  of  equality  must  be  added  a_marked 
spirit  of  idealism.  Americans  have  often  been 
classified  as  crudely  materialistic — "dollar- 
chasers"  whose  one  idea  is  to  seek  wealth  and 
pursue  it.  Certainly  it  is  true  that  our  main 
occupation  is  "business,"  our  great  art  the 
art  of  making  money.  But  this  means  only 
that  the  primary  task  of  America  has  hitherto 
been  the  development  of  the  physical  and 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

material  resources  of  a  virgin  country.  Amer- 
icans have  been  primarily  occupied  with  ma- 
terial things ;  but  they  have  conceived  of  this 
task  in  a  highly  idealistic  spirit.  The  Amer- 
ican makes  money  easily,  but  he  spends  it 
carelessly,  lavishly.  It  is  not  money,  but  the 
making  of  money,  the  enterprise,  the  game,  the 
adventure  of  big  business,  that  enlist  his 
enthusiasm.  America  is  a  big  country,  and 
the  subjection  of  this  vast  continent  within 
the  short  space  of  a  hundred  years  has  ac- 
customed the  American  to  think  in  terms  of 
quantity — the  tallest  building,  the  biggest 
city,  the  longest  railroad — these  things  strike 
the  imagination  because  they  measure  achieve- 
ment. 

There  is  in  the  state  of  New  York  a  little 
town  of  about  twenty  thousand  inhabitants, 
located  in  the  foothills  of  the  Alleghany 
Mountains  at  the  head  of  Lake  Cayuga.  It 
is  the  seat  of  the  university  with  a  deservedly 
high  reputation,  the  library  of  which  con- 
tains what  is  said  to  be  the  finest  Dante  col- 
lection in  the  world,  and  an  admirable  col- 
lection of  books  and  pamphlets  on  the  French 
Revolution — probably  the  best  in  America. 
The  town  of  Ithaca  is  in  many  ways  charming 
and  delightful  and  attractive  above  most 
towns  in  the  country.  Now,  the  business  men 
of  this  town  have  a  motto  which  they  have 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

doubtless  designed  to  convey  to  the  world  the 
thing  which  is  distinctive  of  the  town,  and 
most  worthy  of  note  about  it.  And  what  is 
it  that  they  found  distinctive  of  this  town, 
which  is  so  notable  for  the  beauty  of  its  sur- 
roundings and  for  the  quality  of  its  intellectual 
activities  ?  On  all  of  the  fences  and  sign-posts 
for  miles  around,  they  have  put  up  this  sign — 
"Ithaca,  the  Biggest  Little  City  I" 

In  this  motto  the  business  men  of  Ithaca 
have  tried  to  convey  not  a  reality,  but  an  ideal. 
Ithaca  can  never  in  reality  be  a  big  city — 
it  can  never  rival  New  York  or  Chicago. 
But  the  thing  that  strikes  the  American  im- 
agination about  a  city  like  New  York  or 
Chicago  is  the  ceaseless  enterprise,  the  far- 
sighted  intelligence,  the  adventurous  daring 
of  the  men  who  have  made  them  the  great 
centers  of  economic  life;  and  the  men  of 
Ithaca  wish  you  to  understand  that  if  their 
town  is  not  so  great  as  Chicago,  it  is  due  to 
the  disadvantages  of  its  location  and  not  to 
any  want  of  vision  or  of  enterprise  on  the  part 
of  its  inhabitants. 

The  United  States  is  full  of  these  "biggest 
little  cities."  And  this  is  particularly  true  in 
the  West,  where  there  are  many  cities  of 
three  or  four  hundred  thousand  inhabitants 
that  were  founded  within  the  memory  of 
living  man.  You  meet  these  energetic  business 

176 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

men  who  were  perhaps  born  in  Illinois,  edu- 
cated at  the  University  of  Michigan,  and  have 
"located"  in  Kansas  or  Utah  (you  meet  them 
in  the  smoking-room  of  the  Pullman  cars  trav- 
eling to  New  York,  Heaven  knows  why!),  and 
they  will  tell  you  of  the  town  in  which 
they  live.  It  is  always  the  "finest  town  in 
the  state,"  although  you  have  never  before 
heard  of  it,  and  you  judge  by  the  account 
that  it  is  exactly  like  a  hundred  other  dreary 
Western  towns.  But  sooner  or  later  you  learn 
the  secret  of  the  man's  enthusiasm  when  he 
says,  "It's  going  to  be  a  great  country  some 
day!"  Such  are  Americans,  hurrying  on  with 
restless  energy,  with  tense,  set  faces,  and  eyes 
fixed  upon  that  future  idealized  state  of  "some 
day." 

It  was  this  type  of  idealism  which  clearly 
inspired  the  writer  of  an  editorial  which  was 
published  in  a  newspaper  at  New  Tacoma 
many  years  ago.  The  editorial  was  entitled, 
"Why  We  Should  Be  Happy."  It  appeared 
that  the  people  of  New  Tacoma  should  be 
happy: 

Because  we  are  practically  at  the  head  of  navigation 
on  Puget  Sound.  Tacoma  is  the  place  where  all  the  sur- 
plus products  of  the  South  and  the  East,  that  are  ex- 
ported by  way  of  the  Sound,  must  be  laden  on  board  the 
vessels  that  are  to  carry  them  to  the  four  corners  of  the 
world.  We  should  be  happy  because,  being  at  the  head 

177 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  navigation  on  Puget  Sound,  we  are  also  nearer  by 
many  miles  than  any  other  town  on  Puget  Sound  to 
that  pass  in  the  Cascade  Mountains  through  which  the 
Cascade  division  of  the  Northern  Pacific  Railroad  will 
be  built  in  the  near  future.  .  .  .  We  should  be  happy  . . . 
because  we  are  connected  by  rail  with  Portland  .  .  . 
with  St.  Paul,  Chicago,  and  New  York;  because 
being  thus  connected  we  are  in  daily  communication 
with  the  social,  political,  and  financial  centers  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere;  because  all  the  people  of  the 
South  and  of  the  East  who  visit  these  shores  must 
first  visit  New  Tacoma.  .  .  .  We  should  be  and  we  are 
happy  because  New  Tacoma  is  the  Pacific  coast  termi- 
nus of  a  transcontinental  line  of  railroad — because 
this  is  the  only  place  on  the  whole  Pacific  coast  north 
of  San  Francisco  where  through  freight  from  New 
York  can  be  loaded  on  ship  directly  from  the  cars  in 
which  it  came  from  the  Atlantic  side. 

Other  reasons  why  we  should  be  happy  are  that  New 
Tacoma  is  in  the  center  of  a  country  where  fruits  and 
flowers,  vegetables  and  grain,  grow  in  almost  endless 
variety;  that  we  are  surrounded  with  everything 
beautiful  in  nature  .  .  .  and  that  there  are  opportunities 
here  for  the  fullest  development  of  talents  of  every 
kind.  We  have  youth,  good  health,  and  opportunity. 
What  more  could  be  asked  ? 

This  vision  of  bliss  would  certainly  make 
no  great  appeal  to  a  people  who  were  in  fact 
given  over  to  material  enjoyments. 

Frontier  conditions  have  thus  developed  in 
America  a  high  degree  of  individual  initiative, 
a  strong  sense  of  individual  liberty  in  respect 
to  certain  things,  and  a  marked  tendency  to 

178 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

estimate  material  conditions  in  terms  of  their 
future  possibilities.  These  admirable  quali- 
ties have,  however,  their  defects.  It  is  a  tra- 
dition with  us  that  we  are  a  tolerant  people. 
Were  we  not  the  first  to  establish  complete 
religious  toleration  ?  And  have  we  not  always 
maintained  it  ?  Surely.  But  the  truth  is  that 
we  are  tolerant  mainly  in  respect  to  matters 
which  we  regard  as  indifferent.  We  toler- 
ate religions,  but  look  askance  at  irreligion. 
We  tolerate  political  opinions,  but  are  afraid 
of  anti-political  opinions.  The  average  Amer- 
ican, when  confronted  with  any  conduct  or 
expression  of  opinion  which  he  regards  as 
"dangerous,"  or  as  "morally  wrong,"  in- 
stinctively wishes  to  "do  something  about 
it."  We  have  been  so  long  occupied  with 
practical  problems  of  the  material  order,  have 
been  so  completely  absorbed  in  action,  that 
ideas,  as  such,  ideas  divorced  from  immediate 
practical  ends,  seem  to  us  permissible  mainly 
as  a  diversion,  and  so  long  as  they  can  be  dis- 
missed lightly  as  "interesting"  or  "amusing." 
In  all  serious  matters — matters  not  to  be  ap- 
proached in  the  spirit  of  the  amateur — we 
prefer  ideas  cast  in  formal  mold,  are  at  a  loss 
in  the  midst  of  flexible  play  of  mind,  and  look 
with  suspicion  on  the  emancipated,  the  criti- 
cal, the  speculative  spirit.  All  that  is  aca- 
demic, to  be  confined  to  the  schools,  and  to  be 

179 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

put  off  when  we  pass  out  of  the  schools  into 
"real  life."  In  real  life  the  average  American, 
knowing  that  he  is  right,  wishes  only  to  go 
ahead;  satisfied  with  certain  conventional 
premises — obscure  premises  embodied  in  cer- 
tain great  resounding  words  such  as  liberty, 
democracy,  equality,  toleration — he  hastens 
on  to  the  obvious  conclusion.  When  the  news- 
papers affirm,  as  they  are  fond  of  doing,  "we 
are  a  tolerant  people,"  the  context  is  likely 
to  show  that  what  the  writer  really  means  is 
that  we  are  a  patient,  easy-going,  good-natured 
people;  and  the  phrase  itself  is  usually  the 
prelude  to  the  downright  assertion  that  in 
respect  to  something  or  other — profiteering, 
or  bolshevism,  or  Sunday  baseball — our  pa- 
tience is  almost  exhausted.  We  are  toler- 
ant of  the  thing  or  idea  until  the  thing  or 
idea  becomes  intolerable.  We  are  tolerant 
— that  is  to  say,  we  are  good-natured  and 
can  take  a  jo£e — but  don't  count  on  carry- 
ing the  funny  business  too  far.  That  every 
one  should  do  as  he  likes,  or  think  as  he  likes, 
is  part  of  the  American  creed  only  to  a  lim- 
ited extent.  That  it  is  possible  to  know  what 
is  "right,"  and  that  what  is  right  should  be 
recognized  and  adhered  to,  is  the  more  funda- 
mental faith. 

This  habitual  dislike  of  thinking,  this  aver- 
sion for  ideas,  apart  from  the  type  of  thinking 

1 80 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

and  the  order  of  ideas  required  for  dealing 
with  concrete  practical  problems,  is  closely 
connected  with  that  talent  for  "organization" 
which  is  so  characteristic  of  Americans.  If 
anything  is  "to  be  done,"  an  "organization" 
—a  committee,  a  society,  a  club,  a  corporation, 
an  association — is  built  up  overnight,  mar- 
velously  adapted  to  the  "doing"  of  anything 
that  can  be  done  by  routine  mechanical 
methods.  Every  one  readily  "falls  into  line" 
and  does  his  bit.  But  this  facility  implies 
on  the  part  of  individuals  a  disposition  to 
do  something  rather  than  to  think  something; 
and  indeed  the  great  service  of  our  endless 
"organizations"  is  that  they  conveniently 
relieve  us  all  of  the  trouble  of  thinking  for 
ourselves. 

"What  do  you  think  about  the  tariff?" 

"Oh,  I  am  a  Republican;  I  never  scratch 
the  ticket." 

He  does  not  have  to  think  about  the  tariff; 
the  party  decides  that,  and,  like  Rousseau's 
citizen,  he  has  entered  into  a  tacit  contract 
by  which  he  subordinates  the  individual  to 
the  general  will. 

"What  do  you  think  about  the  wisdom  of 
these  Liberty  loans?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know;  but  we've  got  our 
quota,  and  we've  got  to  put  Tompkins  County 
over  the  top." 

181 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

He  does  not  have  to  decide  whether  Liberty 
loans  are  a  good  thing  or  a  bad  thing;  he  has 
to  put  Tompkins  County  over  the  top ;  he  has 
to  show  those  Syracuse  fellows  that  Tompkins 
County  can  do  whatever  is  put  up  to  it  to  do. 
"What  are  your  religious  views  ?" 
"Well,  you  know  I  am  a  Methodist." 
What  he  means  is  that  he  doesn't  have  to 
think  about  religion;  the  Methodist  Church 
attends  to  that,  and  no  one  can  say  a  word 
against  the  Methodist  Church.  Americans 
have  a  passion  for  regulating  whatever  is  re- 
garded as  important;  they  like  to  place  their 
opinions  in  the  safety-deposit  box  of  some  or- 
ganization. In  respect  to  all  harmless  eccen- 
tricities they  are  easy-going  and  good-natured 
enough — "Oh  well,  I  guess  it  don't  make  any 
difference!" 

These  qualities  —  good  nature,  individual 
initiative,  idealism,  aversion  from  speculative 
thinking,  an  intolerance  toward  "wrong"  con- 
duct and  "bad"  ideas  which  under  excitement 
is  likely  to  run  to  frenzy  and  fanaticism — all 
these  characteristic  American  qualities,  as 
they  have  been  fostered  by  two  centuries  of 
provincial  frontier  conditions,  are  still  more 
strongly  manifested  in  the  newer  Western  than 
in  the  older  Eastern  communities.  Up  to  the 
moment  when  the  United  States  entered  the 
war  the  West  was  regarded  as  "pacifist." 

182 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

People  generally  were  indifferent  to  the  war. 
It  was  a  remote,  European  affair,  with  which 
they  had  nothing  "to  do."  But  when  the 
United  States  entered  the  war,  thenlhey  had 
something  to  do,  and  they  proceeded  with 
characteristic  energy  to  do  it.  Mr.  Wilson 
told  them  that  the  United  States  had  to  go 
in.  "Very  well,"  they  said,  "since  we  have  to 
go  in,  we  must  do  a  good  job  of  it;  we  must 
put  the  business  over."  Once  organized  for 
the  war,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  West  rose  to 
the  highest  possible  pitch,  and  no  opposition 
to  the  war  could  be  tolerated — neither  op- 
position to  the  war  nor  criticism  of  the  govern- 
ment in  the  defense  of  which  "the  boys" 
had  put  on  the  uniform  and  for  the  sake  of 
which  some  of  them  lay  dead  in  France;  so 
that  it  was  reserved  for  an  Iowa  judge  to 
affirm  as  his  solemn  conviction  that  Amer- 
ican history  and  institutions  should  never,  in 
the  schools,  be  brought  into  comparison 
with  European  history  and  institutions  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  the  former  could  be  shown 
to  be  superior  to  the  latter.  The  Iowa  judge 
would  doubtless  have  justified  his  position  by 
saying  that  it  is  wrong  to  discredit  American 
institutions  because  it  is  wrong  to  under- 
mine the  great  principle  of  liberty  and  equal- 
ity upon  which  American  institutions  are 
founded. 
13  183 


THE  UNITED  STATES 


In  1890  the  superintendent  of  the  census 
made  the  following  significant  statement: 

Up  to  and  including  1880  the  country  had  a  frontier 
of  settlement,  but  at  present  the  unsettled  area  has 
been  so  broken  into  isolated  bodies  of  settlement  that 
there  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  a  frontier  line.  In  the 
discussion  of  its  extent,  its  westward  movement,  etc., 
it  cannot,  therefore,  any  longer  have  a  place  in  the 
census  reports. 

This  brief  official  statement,  as  Professor 
Turner  well  says,  "marks  the  closing  of  a  great 
historic  movement."  In  our  day  the  era  of 
unlimited  free  land  suitable  for  cultivation 
has  already  passed,  and  with  the  disappear- 
ance of  free  land,  the  old  freedom  for  the  in- 
dividual, the  old  equality  of  opportunity, 
which  have  hitherto  been  the  guaranties  of 
American  democracy,  are  things  of  which  one 
can  no  longer  speak  with  the  same  confidence. 
The  abnormal  price  of  the  best  farm  land, 
which  now,  in  the  states  of  Iowa  and  Illinois, 
sells  for  from  $250  to  $425  per  acre,  is  slowly 
but  surely  creating  a  permanent  class  of  tenant 
farmers,  while  the  abnormal  concentration  of 
industrial  power  is  not  only  creating  a  per- 
manent class  of  wage-earners,  but  is  placing 
the  control  of  the  production  and  the  distri- 

184 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

bution  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  few. 
Political  democracy  we  have;  but  the  old 
economic  democracy  is  rapidly  becoming  a 
thing  of  the  past.  To  achieve,  under  these 
changed  conditions  and  by  new  methods,  the 
economic  freedom  without  which  political 
freedom  is  of  little  use  is  the  task  of  the 
coming  years. 


VII 


DEMOCRACY   AND    SLAVERY 


WHEN  Jefferson  wrote  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  proclaiming  as  a  uni- 
versal truth  that  "all  men  are  created  equal/' 
negro  slavery  was  a  legalized  institution 
throughout  the  thirteen  states.  The  contrast 
between  the  actual  fact  and  the  proclaimed 
truth  was  flagrant  and  irreconcilable.  Jeffer- 
son and  his  associates  were  entirely  aware  of 
the  fact.  It  was  commonly  believed  at  the 
time  that  slavery  was  a  moral  as  well  as  an 
economic  evil,  but  the  leading  men  of  the 
day  looked  forward  to  the  early  disappear- 
ance of  the  evil.  Jefferson  and  Washington 
and  many  others,  although  themselves  the 
owners  of  slaves,  were  sincerely  interested  in 
the  movement  for  gradual  emancipation;  and 
they  hoped  and  expected  that  the  institution 
would  not  outlast  the  century  of  which  the 
dominant  spirit  was  a  passionate  concern  for 
human  freedom.  They  would  have  been 

1 86 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

amazed  and  disheartened  could  they  have 
known  that  within  fifty  years  negro  slavery 
would  be  the  foundation  of  the  economic  and 
social  life  of  the  Southern  States,  that  it  would 
threaten  the  very  existence  of  the  federal 
Union,  compromise  the  future  of  free  govern- 
ment, and  end  at  last  in  a  desperate  and 
sanguinary  civil  war. 

The  rapid  and  unforeseen  development  of 
slavery  in  the  South  was  due  to  one  of  those 
slight  changes  in  the  mechanics  of  industry 
which  so  often  exercise  a  profound  influence 
upon  the  course  of  history.  In  1793  Eli 
Whitney  invented  the  cotton-gin,  a  simple 
device  for  separating  the  seed  from  the  fiber 
which,  by  enabling  one  man  to  do  the  work 
of  three  hundred,  so  greatly  increased  the 
profit  of  cotton  culture  that  cotton  soon  be- 
came one  of  the  chief  of  American  products. 
For  the  raising  of  cotton,  negro  slaves  were 
thought  to  be  peculiarly  suited;  and  wherever 
cotton  could  be  raised  negro  slavery  became 
every  year  more  intrenched,  was  every  year 
more  complacently  excused  by  its  benefi- 
ciaries as  an  economic  necessity,  and  at  last 
defended  as  a  social  and  moral  blessing.  But 
cotton  could  be  raised  only  in  the  South.  It 
was,  therefore,  only  in  the  South,  where 
slaves  were  profitable,  that  slavery  increased 
and  was  defended,  while  in  the  North,  where 

187 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

slaves  were  unprofitable,  slavery  disappeared 
and  was  denounced  as  an  evil. 

By  1820  far-sighted  men  could  see  that 
slavery,  whether  right  or  wrong,  would  prove 
a  serious  problem  because  it  threatened  to 
divide  the  Union  into  two  parts — North  and 
South — with  very  different  economic  interests 
and  institutions  and  with  antagonistic  moral 
and  social  ideas.  As  these  differences  became 
more  pronounced,  the  divergence  would  per- 
haps create  two  nations  instead  of  one,  and 
in  that  case  each  group  or  nation  would  think 
that  its  own  interests  could  not  be  adequately 
guaranteed  unless  it  had  at  least  an  equal 
power  in  the  common  federal  government. 
And  in  fact  for  many  years  it  was  the  tacit 
understanding  that  the  equal  influence  of  the 
two  sections  should  be  preserved  in  that 
branch  of  the  federal  government — the  Senate 
— in  which  every  state  had  the  same  number 
of  representatives. 

It  happened  that  the  division  between  slave 
and  free  states  was  sufficiently  even,  so  that 
for  some  years  the  balance  could  be  deliber- 
ately preserved  by  the  admission  of  an  equal 
number  of  free  and  slave  states  from  the 
Western  territories.  So  long  as  slavery  was 
not  regarded  too  seriously  little  friction  arose 
in  carrying  out  this  policy.  But  in  1820,  in 
connection  with  the  admission  of  the  state  of 

188 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Missouri,  it  was  proposed  that  throughout 
the  whole  of  the  territory  west  of  the  Missis- 
sippi (the  Louisiana  territory  acquired  in  1803 
from  France)  slavery  should  forever  be  pro- 
hibited north  of  the  line  of  36°  30'  north  lati- 
tude. This  would  have  excluded  slavery  from 
the  proposed  new  state  of  Missouri,  and  as 
the  Northern  free  state  of  Illinois  had  been 
admitted  in  1819,  and  the  Northern  territory 
of  Maine  was  petitioning  for  admission,  this 
would  make  three  new  free  states  without  any 
new  slave  state,  and  so  give  to  the  North  a 
great  advantage  in  the  federal  Senate.  The 
question  aroused  wide-spread  discussion,  and 
was  at  last  settled  by  the  "Missouri  Com- 
promise/' which  established  the  dividing  line 
at  36°  30',  but  provided  that  Missouri  should 
be  allowed  to  come  in  as  a  slave  state.  The 
"Missouri  Compromise"  was  accepted  as  a 
permanent  settlement,  and  for  some  years  the 
slavery  question  was  in  abeyance.  But  the 
aged  Jefferson,  noting  the  sudden  flaring  up 
of  angry  controversy,  likened  the  episode  to 
a  "fire-bell  in  the  night."  It  was  indeed  the 
first  clear  warning  of  the  coming  danger. 

ii 

The  economic  dilemma  which  negro  slavery 
created  was  the  same  as  that  which  is  created 

189 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

by  any  system  of  slavery,  including  wage- 
slavery — it  was  profitable  to  the  individual 
slave-owner,  but  disastrous  to  the  community. 
Hence  the  ruling  class  in  the  South,  a  rela- 
tively small  part  of  the  population,  held  on 
*  desperately  to  the  institution  which  with  every 
decade  became  a  heavier  handicap  upon  the 
Southern  States  in  the  competition  with  the 
North  for  economic  and  political  power.  It 
was  primarily  due  to  slavery  that  the  South 
remained  an  agricultural  community.  Slaves 
were  unsuited  to  manufactures.  Cotton  plan- 
tations and  slaves,  constantly  increasing  in 
value,  absorbed  Southern  capital,  and  as 
manual  labor  was  a  disgrace  where  slavery 
existed,  the  poor  whites  preferred  to  vegetate 
on  their  small  farms  rather  than  work  for 
wages,  while  the  steady  stream  of  foreign 
immigration  flowed  almost  wholly  into  the 
North.  Both  in  wealth  and  in  population  the 
free  states,  therefore,  rapidly  outstripped  the 
slave  states,  and  such  wealth  as  existed  in 
the  South  was  largely  confined  to  the  relatively 
small  class  of  great  planters  and  slave-owners. 
These  economic  disadvantages  were  in- 
creased by  the  steady  rise  in  the  price  of  slaves, 
due  in  part  to  the  prohibition,  after  1808, 
of  the  foreign  slave  trade.  Since  the  price  of 
cotton  did  not  advance  in  proportion,  the 
continued  profit  of  cotton-raising  depended 

190 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

upon  cheap  land  and  large-scale  production. 
Cheap  land  was  to  be  had  in  the  Western 
territories,  but  in  this  respect  the  South  was  at 
a  singular  disadvantage  also,  for  the  division 
of  the  Western  territory  by  the  "Missouri 
Compromise"  gave  to  the  North  the  greater 
part  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  while  the 
population  and  wealth  of  the  North  enabled 
it  to  settle  and  exploit  its  share  much  more 
rapidly  than  the  South  could  hope  to  exploit 
its  share.  By  1850  it  was  clear  that  if  slavery 
were  confined  to  the  region  south  of  36°  30', 
the  North,  which  already  overbalanced  the 
South  in  the  federal  House  of  Representatives, 
must  eventually  gain  a  great  ascendancy  in 
the  Senate  also. 

This  prospect  would  not  have  given  the 
South  so  great  concern  if  it  could  have  been 
assured  that  the  North  would  never  use  its 
political  advantage  to  discriminate  against 
Southern  interests.  The  South  came,  there- 
fore, to  regard  the  union  with  the  North  as 
tolerable  on  the  condition  that  the  "peculiar 
institution,"  as  it  was  called,  should  not  be 
molested  where  it  already  existed.  From  the 
legal  and  constitutional  point  of  view,  the 
position  of  the  South  was  a  strong  one,  for 
the  Constitution  conferred  upon  the  federal 
government  no  power  of  interfering  with 
slavery  in  the  states,  and  it  was  possible  to 

191 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

argue  that  it  had  exceeded  its  powers  in  pro- 
hibiting it  in  the  territories  north  of  36°  30'. 
But  in  spite  of  legal  protection,  the  South 
felt  that  with  every  decade  the  safety  of  the 
"peculiar  institution"  was  becoming  more  pre- 
carious. This  was  indeed  true.  It  was  true 
because  the  slavery  question  was  not  one 
which  could  be  settled  by  compromise  or 
confined  within  the  limits  of  legal  categories. 
Slavery  was  a  moral  question  as  well  as  an 
economic  and  constitutional  one.  It  was  the 
moral  issue  that  came  to  enforce  the  economic 
differences  between  the  sections  and  ultimately 
made  these  differences  irreconcilable  by  any 
half-way  measures.  As  an  economic  institu- 
tion the  slavery  question  might  have  been 
settled  by  compromise;  as  a  moral  question 
it  could  not  be  settled  until  the  Union  was 
destroyed  or  until  it  became  all  slave  or  all 
free. 

From  the  eighteenth  century  slavery  had 
been  regarded  as  a  moral  evil  by  many  people ; 
and  there  had  always  been  societies,  animated 
by  amiable  humanitarian  impulses,  devoted 
to  a  mild  sort  of  emancipation  propaganda. 
But  in  1831,  when  William  Lloyd  Garrison 
established  the  Liberator  in  Boston,  the  op- 
position to  slavery  was  taken  up  by  a  different 
sort  of  men  and  in  a  radically  different  spirit. 
Previously,  the  South  had  had  little  to  fear 

192 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

from  the  prevailing  Northern  sentiment  that 
slavery  was  in  itself  an  evil,  but  that  in  the 
South,  and  under  present  conditions,  it  was 
probably  a  necessary  evil  for  which  the  slave- 
owners were  not  to  be  held  morally  responsible, 
and  which  they  must  be  left  to  deal  with  as 
time  and  circumstances  might  determine. 
Garrison  and  the  "Abolitionists"  altogether 
repudiated  such  views. 

I  shall  strenuously  contend  [Garrison  said]  for  the 
immediate  emancipation  of  our  slave  population.  I 
will  be  as  harsh  as  truth  and  as  uncompromising  as 
justice.  ...  I  am  in  earnest — I  will  not  equivocate — 
I  will  not  excuse — I  will  not  retract  a  single  inch — and 
I  will  be  heard.  ...  I  take  it  for  granted  slavery  is  a 
crime — a  damning  crime;  therefore,  my  efforts  shall 
be  directed  to  the  exposure  of  those  who  practise  it. 

Two  points  are  significant  in  the  above 
quotation.  Garrison  insisted  upon  the  im- 
mediate emancipation  of  the  slaves.  If  any 
one  objected  that  the  Constitution — the  be- 
loved Constitution — stood  in  the  way  of  any 
such  program,  he  could  only  reply  that  if 
the  Constitution  sanctioned  slavery,  then  the 
Constitution  was  "a  league  with  death  and  a 
covenant  with  hell."  The  second  point  is  still 
more  important.  Garrison  proclaimed  slavery 
to  be  no  "necessary  evil,"  but  a  "damning 
crime,"  and  he  regarded  all  slave-owners  as 

193 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

guilty  of  that  crime,  and,  therefore,  as  vile  and 
despicable  men.  This  was  the  spirit  of  the 
new  Abolition  movement  which  William  Lloyd 
Garrison  began.  It  was  an  uncompromising 
attack  upon  slavery  as  a  crime  and  upon 
slave-owners  as  criminals.  The  infamy  must 
be  abolished,  the  Abolitionists  said;  it  must 
be  abolished  now;  and  in  the  way  of  this 
righteous  object  no  consideration  of  personal 
feelings,  of  convenience,  of  vested  rights,  or 
of  legal  technicalities  must  be  allowed  to 
stand  for  a  moment.  For  many  years,  through- 
out the  North,  the  Abolitionists  were  despised 
as  fanatics  and  feared  as  dangerous  incendi- 
aries. But  the  spirit  which  they  aroused 
would  not  down;  their  following  steadily  in- 
creased ;  and  even  outside  of  their  ranks  they 
won,  more  and  more,  the  sympathy  of  men 
who  agreed  with  Emerson  that  although  "they 
might  be  wrong-headed,  they  were  wrong- 
headed  in  the  right  direction." 

If  the  Abolitionists  were  despised  and 
mobbed  in  the  North,  they  were  hated  with  a 
desperate  hatred  in  the  South.  To  say  that 
slavery  was  a  necessary  evil  was  no  reflection 
upon  Southern  planters.  They  had  commonly, 
before  1830,  said  as  much  themselves.  Many 
things  in  this  world  are  necessary  evils  and 
are  complacently  accepted  as  such.  It  could 
be  said,  and  was  said,  that  the  wretched  con- 

194 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

clition  of  factory  laborers  in  New  England  and 
old  England  cotton-mills  was  a  necessary 
evil.  But  it  was  a  different  matter  when 
people  began  to  denounce  slavery  as  an  un- 
necessary evil,  as  a  crime  against  humanity. 
Slave-owners  might  think  the  charge  absurd, 
and  as  long  as  Abolition  sentiment  was  con- 
fined to  a  few  fanatics  they  could  ignore  it 
with  contempt.  But  the  danger  was  that 
Abolitionists  might  spread  throughout  the 
North,  and  if  that  came  to  pass,  as  it  every 
day  was  coming  to  pass,  the  slave-owners  knew 
well  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  continue 
to  live  in  political  union  with  a  people  who 
regarded  them  as  unworthy  of  a  decent  man's 
respect. 

When  slavery  was  challenged  as  a  crime, 
the  slave-owners  could  therefore  no  longer  be 
content  to  describe  it  as  a  "necessary  evil." 
The  Abolitionist  argument  could  be  adequate- 
ly met  only  by  proving  that  slavery  was  a 
positive  good,  an  institution  that  harmonized 
with  the  nature  of  things,  a  social  arrangement 
which  was  a  blessing  to  society  and  a  benefit 
to  the  slave.  Between  1830  and  1860  serious 
and  humane  and  gifted  men  formulated  such 
a  defense  of  slavery.  They  were  only  follow- 
ing a  marked  trend  of  thought  throughout  the 
world  when  they  maintained  that  the  phrases 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  were  no 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

more  than  "glittering  generalities."  The  truth 
is,  said  Chancellor  Harper,  not  that  "all  men 
are  created  equal/'  but  rather  that  "man  is 
born  to  subjection."  A  careful  and  unpreju- 
diced study  of  history,  he  said,  would  reveal 
the  fact  that — 

The  exclusive  owners  of  property  ever  have  been, 
ever  will,  and  perhaps  ever  ought  to  be  the  virtual 
rulers  of  mankind.  ...  It  is  the  order  of  nature  and  of 
God  that  the  being  of  superior  faculties  and  knowledge, 
and  therefore  of  superior  power,  should  control  and 
dispose  of  those  who  are  inferior.  It  is  as  much  the 
order  of  nature  that  men  should  enslave  each  other  as 
that  animals  should  prey  upon  each  other. 

This  was  written  in  1837,  and  at  that  date 
it  was  easy  to  point  out,  with  much  semblance 
of  truth,  that  the  industrial  civilization  of 
New  England  and  of  old  England,  no  less 
than  the  agricultural  civilization  of  the  South, 
was  based  upon  the  subjection  of  the  many  by 
the  few.  There  was  a  wage-slavery  as  well  as 
a  chattel  slavery,  and  the  South  maintained 
that  the  former  was  worse  than  the  latter.  In 
1845  James  H.  Hammond  published  a  series 
of  letters  in  which  he  drew  a  heartrending 
picture  of  the  condition  of  laborers  in  the  great 
industrial  centers.  Since  subjection  was  thus 
the  essential  basis  of  civilized  society,  that 
system  was  best  where  the  master  was  re- 

196 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

sponsible  for  the  slave.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
abolishing  negro  slavery  in  the  South,  this 
system  should  be  taken  as  the  model  for  the 
reform  of  industrial  conditions  in  the  North. 
The  capitalists,  according  to  Mr.  Hammond, 
should  become  the  owners  of  their  laborers 
and  as  such  be  compelled  to  clothe  and  feed 
them  decently;  while  in  the  West  the  public 
lands  should  be  parceled  out  in  great  estates 
and  tilled  by  the  landless  poor  bound  in  per- 
petuity to  the  soil.1 

As  this  philosophy  came  to  be  the  accepted 
social  and  political  faith  throughout  the  South, 
its  advocates  ceased  to  be  content  with  the 
negative  policy  of  preserving  slavery  where  it 
already  existed.  For  Southern  extremists,  no 
less  than  for  Northern  extremists,  the  slavery 
question  became  a  moral  issue,  capable  only 
of  a  logical  and  a  radical  solution.  If  slavery 
was  a  damnable  crime,  as  the  Abolitionists 
said,  then  it  ought  to  be  immediately  abolished 
everywhere — this  the  defenders  of  slavery  ad- 
mitted; but  if  it  was,  on  the  contrary,  a 
positive  social  blessing,  then  it  ought  to  be 
permitted  everywhere — and  this  the  advo- 
cates of  slavery  demanded.  They  demanded 
the  repeal  of  the  "Missouri  Compromise"  and 
the  free  access  of  slavery  to  all  the  territories ; 

1W.   E.   Dodd,  Social  Philosophy  of  the  Old   South,  American 
Journal  of  Sociology,  xxiii,  p.  735. 

197 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

they  demanded  the  forcible  suppression  of  the 
Abolitionists  and  of  all  Abolition  literature; 
they  demanded  the  active  assistance  of  all 
Northerners  in  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves; 
they  demanded  that  all  criticism  of  slavery 
should  cease  and  that  it  should  be  accepted 
not  only  as  a  legally  established,  but  as  a 
morally  justifiable  institution. 

Put  in  this  form,  the  challenge  was  accepted. 
Abolitionist  sentiment  spread  rapidly  in  the 
North  during  the  decade  from  1850  to  1860; 
and  nineteen  years  after  a  mob  had  dragged 
William  Lloyd  Garrison  through  the  streets 
of  Boston  it  required  over  a  thousand  armed 
soldiers  supplied  with  a  cannon  loaded  with 
grape-shot  to  take  the  fugitive  slave  Burns 
out  of  that  town  and  send  him  back  to  Vir- 
ginia. The  prevailing  sentiment  was  never 
Abolitionist.  To  the  end  the  great  majority 
of  the  people  were  opposed  to  any  interfer- 
ence with  slavery  where  it  existed;  but  they 
looked  with  complacence  upon  the  systematic 
violation  of  the  fugitive-slave  law,  and  set 
themselves  more  and  more  resolutely  to  resist 
the  legal  extension  of  the  institution  in  the 
belief  that  if  the  evil  were  confined  to  the 
states  where  it  already  existed  it  would  ulti- 
mately disappear  altogether. 

It  was  with  this  program  in  view  that  the 
Republican  party  was  formed,  and  as  the  ex- 

198 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

portent  of  these  views  Abraham  Lincoln  be- 
came the  leader  of  that  party.  In  1858 
Lincoln  touched  the  heart  of  the  matter  in 
the  following  lucid  statement: 

If  we  could  first  know  where  we  are  and  whither  we 
are  tending,  we  could  better  judge  what  to  do  and  how 
to  do  it.  We  are  now  far  into  the  fifth  year  since  a 
policy  was  instituted  with  the  avowed  object,  and 
confident  promise,  of  putting  an  end  to  slavery  agita- 
tion. Under  the  operation  of  that  policy,  that  agitation 
has  not  only  not  ceased,  but  has  constantly  augmented. 
In  my  opinion,  it  will  not  cease  until  a  crisis  shall 
have  been  reached  and  passed.  "A  house  divided 
against  itself  cannot  stand."  I  believe  this  government 
cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave  and  half  free. 
I  do  not  expect  the  Union  to  be  dissolved — I  do  not 
expect  the  house  to  fall — but  I  do  expect  it  will  cease 
to  be  divided.  It  will  become  all  one  thing  or  all  the 
other.  Either  the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest 
the  further  spread  of  it,  and  place  it  where  the  public 
mind  shall  rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in  the  course  of 
ultimate  extinction;  or  its  advocates  will  push  it  for- 
ward till  it  shall  become  alike  lawful  in  all  the  states, 
old  as  well  as  new — North  as  well  as  South. 


At  that  time  most  of  Lincoln's  friends  told 
him  that  this  was  an  unwise  thing  to  say— 
"a  fool  utterance,"  one  of  them  called  it. 
But  it  was,  in  truth,  the  profoundest  wisdom. 
The  more  the  moderates  in  both  sections 
agreed  that  the  slavery  question  should  be 
ignored  the  more  it  was  discussed;  and  the 

14  199 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

more  it  was  discussed  the  more  irreconcilable 
the  position  of  the  two  sections  was  seen  to  be. 
The  moderate  Whig  party,  both  North  and 
South,  dwindled  to  a  small  minority,  and  when 
Lincoln  was  finally  elected  President,  in  1860, 
the  Southern  States  seceed  from  the  Union. 

The  meaning  of  the  election  was  clear.    It 
meant,  says  James  Ford  Rhodes,  that — 

The  great  and  powerful  North  declared  slavery  an 
evil,  and  maintained  that  it  should  not  be  extended; 
that  while  the  institution  would  be  sacredly  respected 
where  it  existed,  the  conduct  of  the  national  govern- 
ment must  revert  to  the  policy  of  the  fathers  and 
confine  slavery  within  bounds,  hoping  that  if  it  were 
restricted  the  time  might  come  when  the  Southern 
people  would  themselves  acknowledge  that  they  were 
out  of  tune  with  the  enlightened  world  and  take  steps 
gradually  to  abolish  the  system. 

The  Southern  States  seceded  because  the 
election  of  Lincoln  demonstrated  that  North- 
ern sentiment  condemned  slavery,  and  in 
condemning  slavery  it  had  placed  a  stigma 
upon  the  Southern  people.  To  admit  that 
slavery  must  not  be  extended  was  to  admit 
that  it  ought  not  to  exist.  If  the  Southern 
people  remained  in  the  Union,  they  must 
either  abolish  slavery  or  be  content  with  the 
position  of  a  morally  discredited  minority 
whose  social  customs  were  temporarily  toler- 
ated for  the  sake  of  peace.  They  refused  to 
do  either.  For  the  sake  of  slavery,  and  justify- 

200 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ing  their  action  on  the  ground  that  any  state 
had  a  constitutional  right  to  withdraw  from 
the  federal  Union,  they  fought  a  desperate 
war  for  independence  and  the  right  of  self- 
determination. 

in 

In  respect  to  the  problem  of  secession,  there 
was  no  consolidated  public  sentiment  in  the 
North.  Many  Democrats  sympathized  with 
the  South  and  admitted  the  constitutional 
right  of  the  states  to  withdraw  from  the  Union ; 
many  humanitarian  Abolitionists  and  some 
Republicans  felt  that  if  the  Southern  States 
were  dissatisfied  and  wished  to  form  a  separate 
government,  it  would  be  the  part  of  wisdom 
and  humanity  to  allow  them  to  depart  in 
peace.  While  the  great  majority  of  the  people 
were  opposed  to  slavery,  only  a  small  minority 
were  ready  to  take  up  arms  for  the  avowed 
purpose  of  abolishing  it.  President  Lincoln 
himself  took  the  ground  that  the  federal  gov- 
ernment would  do  nothing  to  interfere  with 
slavery  in  the  Southern  States;  but  he  said 
that  no  state  had  a  legal  right  to  secede; 
that  those  people  in  any  state  who  attempted 
to  do  so  were  in  a  state  of  rebellion ;  and  that 
the  whole  power  of  the  federal  government 
would  be  devoted  to  suppressing  any  resistance 
to  the  federal  authority.  It  was  on  this 

20 1 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

ground  that  Northern  sentiment  came  gradu- 
ally to  the  support  of  the  President.  The 
North  fought  the  Civil  War,  not  for  the  sup- 
pression of  slavery,  but  for  the  "preservation 
of  the  Union." 

The  right  of  any  government  to  suppress 
insurrection  or  rebellion  is  generally  admitted. 
But  this  was  an  exceptional  case.  The  legal 
right  of  secession  was  open  to  discussion,  but 
technically  the  South  had  a  more  logical  and 
convincing  argument  in  favor  of  the  right 
than  the  North  had  against  it.  A  movement 
which  embraced  ten  million  people,  all  in- 
habiting a  particular  and  economically  dis- 
tinct section  of  the  country,  could  scarcely 
be  called  an  insurrection;  and,  in  view  of  the 
radical  differences  in  social  customs  and  ideals, 
it  might  well  be  maintained  that  the  natural 
development  of  the  country  had  in  fact  re- 
sulted in  the  creation  of  two  nations  instead 
of  one.  Many  people  in  Europe  took  this 
view.  In  1862  William  E.  Gladstone,  at  that 
time  a  member  of  the  British  government, 
declared  in  a  public  address  that  the  "leaders 
of  the  South  have  made  an  army;  they  are 
making,  it  appears,  a  navy;  and  they  have 
made,  what  is  more  than  either,  they  have 
made  a  nation."  On  the  ground  that  the 
South  was  a  nation,  that  as  such  it  had  a  right 
to  self-determination,  the  British  government 

202 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

was  on  the  point  of  recognizing  its  indepen- 
ence.  By  what  right  did  the  North  use  its 
superior  power  to  compel  the  Southern  people 
to  submit  to  a  government  which  they  re- 
pudiated, and  ultimately  to  abolish  an  in- 
stitution to  which  they  were  devoted  ? 

The  subjugation  of  the  Southern  people 
must  be  justified,  if  at  all,  on  two  grounds. 
It  was  profound  political  wisdom,  as  well  as 
good  political  tactics,  in  President  Lincoln  to 
have  based  the  issue  on  the  preservation  of 
the  Union.  Free  government  as  it  existed  in 
the  United  States  was  a  new  thing  in  the  world 
—a  kind  of  political  experiment  as  yet  not 
thoroughly  tested,  upon  which  the  Old  World 
looked  with  interest,  but  with  doubt  as  to  the 
outcome.  Free  governments  had  existed  and 
still  existed  in  the  Old  World ;  but  the  experi- 
ence of  the  Old  World,  confirmed  by  the 
political  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
declared  that  free  government,  in  any  radical 
sense  of  the  term,  was  suited  only  to  small 
states,  such  as  the  city-states  of  Greece  and 
Italy,  or  the  cantons  of  the  Swiss  mountains. 
It  was  still  a  debatable  question  whether  gov- 
ernment by  the  people  was  suitable  to  an 
extensive  territory;  and  in  the  experiment 
now  being  conducted  in  the  United  States  no 
point  was  of  greater  interest  or  importance 
than  this:  Could  a  first-rate  political  power 

203 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

be  erected  and  maintained  on  a  democratic 
basis  ? 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  disruption 
of  the  United  States  would  have  answered 
this  question  in  the  negative  for  a  long  future. 
Precisely  this  result  had  often  been  predicted 
by  those  who  sought  to  discredit  republican 
institutions  and  feared  by  those  who  sup- 
ported them.  It  was  said  that  a  great  con- 
tinent like  the  United  States  must  inevitably 
fall  apart  if  it  continued  to  be  governed  by 
public  opinion.  Sectional  differences  of  in- 
terests and  ideals  must  inevitably  develop 
to  the  point  where  political  union  could  be 
preserved  only  by  a  government  which  in  some 
measure  transcended  public  opinion,  and  in 
some  degree  rested  upon  military  power.  The 
divergence  between  North  and  South  had  now 
reached  this  point,  and  the  contest  between 
them  would  be  decisive.  If  the  South  had 
won  its  independence,  the  result  would  have 
been  to  create  an  irresistible  precedent,  an 
unanswerable  justification  for  any  other  sec- 
tion that  was  so  minded  to  withdraw  and  go 
its  own  way.  If  the  South  had  won,  it  is  en- 
tirely conceivable,  and  indeed  likely,  that  the 
United  States  would  have  rapidly  dissolved 
into  a  congeries  of  petty  republics  contending 
among  themselves  for  a  New  World  balance 
of  power,  exhausting  their  resources  in  mili- 

204 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

tary  rivalry,  surrendering  half  their  freedom 
to  some  European  alliance  from  fear  of  ag- 
gression or  in  the  hope  of  ascendancy. 

Such  a  result  would  have  tremendously 
compromised  the  future  of  democracy.  In 
Europe,  above  all  in  England,  the  disruption 
of  the  Union  would  have  been  taken  to  mean 
that  no  great  state  could  hope  to  win  or  to 
retain  pre-eminence  in  the  world's  affairs  if 
it  surrendered  itself  unreservedly  to  govern- 
ment by  the  people.  This  is  precisely  why  the 
laboring  classes  in  England  supported  the 
North,  while  the  governing  classes  hoped  for 
the  success  of  the  South.  In  1863  John 
Bright  stated,  in  words  that  the  laborers  of 
England  could  understand,  the  significance  for 
them  of  the  Civil  War: 

Privilege  thinks  it  has  a  great  interest  in  the  Amer- 
ican contest,  and  every  morning,  with  blatant  voice, 
it  comes  into  our  streets  and  curses  the  American 
Republic.  Privilege  has  beheld  an  afflicting  spectacle 
for  many  years  past.  It  has  beheld  thirty  millions  of 
men  happy  and  prosperous,  without  emperors — without 
kings  [cheers] — without  the  surroundings  of  a  court 
[renewed  cheers] — without  nobles,  except  such  as  are 
made  by  eminence  in  intellect  and  virtue — without 
State  bishops  and  State  priests,  those  venders  of  the 
love  that  works  salvation  [cheers] — without  great  armies 
and  great  navies — without  a  great  debt  and  great  taxes 
— and  Privilege  has  shuddered  at  what  might  happen 
to  old  Europe  if  this  great  experiment  should  succeed. 

205 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

That  this  was  no  exaggeration  of  the  feeling 
of  the  governing  classes  has  been  admirably 
demonstrated  by  Prof.  E.  D.  Adams  in  his 
little  pamphlet  entitled,  Great  Britain,  Amer- 
ica, and  Democracy.  He  quotes  from  the 
Morning  Post:  "If  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  should  succeed,  .  .  .  Democracy 
will  have  achieved  the  greatest  triumph  since 
the  world  began.  It  will  have  demonstrated 
to  the  ample  satisfaction  of  its  present  and 
future  proselytes  that  it  is  even  more  puissant 
in  war  than  in  peace."  And  from  the  Edin- 
burgh Review:  "It  is  precisely  because  we  do 
not  share  the  admiration  of  America  for  her 
own  institutions  and  political  tendencies  that 
we  do  not  now  see  in  the  impending  change 
[success  of  the  South]  an  event  altogether  to 
be  deplored.  In  those  institutions  and  ten- 
dencies we  saw  what  our  own  might  be  if  the 
most  dangerous  elements  of  our  constitution 
should  become  dominant.  We  saw  Democ- 
racy rampant,  with  no  restrictions  upon  its 
caprices/'  Professor  Adams's  conclusion  is 
that  "in  England  the  basic  opinion  of  our 
war  was  of  '  democracy  on  trial,'  and  men 
took  sides  as  they  desired  or  opposed  an  ex- 
pansion of  democracy  in  England."  And  this, 
in  general,  was  what  the  Civil  War  signified 
to  Europe:  the  success  of  the  great  experiment 
in  democracy  depended  upon  whether  the 

206 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

union  of  the  states  could  be  preserved,  and 
so  reconstructed  as  to  retain  the  essential 
spirit  of  a  free  and  popular  government. 

The  Civil  War  may  thus  be  justified  on  the 
ground  that  the  preservation  of  the  Union 
was  of  decisive  importance  in  the  history  of 
free  institutions.  From  this  point  of  view 
the  significance  of  the  war  has  once  for  all  been 
expressed  in  the  imperishable  words  of  Pres- 
ident Lincoln's  address  in  commemoration  of 
the  soldiers  who  fell  at  Gettysburg: 

Fourscore  and  seven  years  ago  our  fathers  brought 
forth  on  this  continent  a  new  nation,  conceived  in 
liberty  and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men 
are  created  equal.  Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil 
war,  testing  whether  that  nation,  or  any  nation  so 
conceived  and  so  dedicated,  can  long  endure.  We  are 
met  on  a  great  battle-field  of  that  war.  We  have  come 
to  dedicate  a  portion  of  that  field  as  a  final  resting- 
place  for  those  who  here  gave  their  lives  that  that 
nation  might  live.  It  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper 
that  we  should  do  this.  But  in  a  larger  sense  we 
cannot  dedicate,  we  cannot  consecrate,  we  cannot 
hallow  this  ground.  The  brave  men,  living  and  dead, 
who  struggled  here  have  consecrated  it  far  above  our 
poor  power  to  add  or  detract.  The  world  will  little 
note,  nor  long  remember,  what  we  say  here,  but  it 
can  never  forget  what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the 
living,  rather  to  be  dedicated  here  to  the  unfinished 
work  which  they  who  fought  here  have  thus  far  so 
nobly  advanced.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  be  here  dedi- 
cated to  the  great  task  remaining  before  us — that  from 

207 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

these  honored  dead  we  take  increased  devotion  to  that 
cause  for  which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  de- 
votion— that  we  here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead 
shall  not  have  died  in  vain — that  this  nation,  under 
God,  shall  have  a  new  birth  of  freedom — and  that 
government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people 
shall  not  perish  from  the  earth. 

In  this  brief  address  of  scarcely  more  than 
two  hundred  words,  delivered  within  the  space 
of  two  minutes,  an  address  which  by  common 
consent  ranks  among  the  classics  of  English 
speech,  Abraham  Lincoln  revealed  the  essen- 
tial significance  of  American  history,  and  of 
the  Civil  War  as  a  part  of  that  history,  both 
for  the  New  World  and  for  the  Old. 

But  the  war  could  scarcely  have  been  justi- 
fied on  this  ground,  on  this  ground,  precisely, 
it  could  indeed  have  been  condemned,  if  the 
Southern  claim  to  independence  had  rested 
upon  permanent  and  ineradicable  differences 
of  race  and  language  and  of  traditional  cus- 
tom. This  was  not  the  case.  The  funda- 
mental and  ultimately  the  sole  cause  of  quar- 
rel was  slavery;  and  slavery  was  not  only 
contrary  to  the  trend  of  modern  economic 
development  and  of  modern  thought,  but 
flagrantly  and  completely  contrary  to  the 
ideas  in  behalf  of  which  the  United  States  won 
its  independence  from  Great  Britain,  as  well 
as  to  the  spirit  of  its  political  institutions. 

208 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

The  social  philosophy  by  which  the  South 
justified  slavery  was  a  denial  of  America's 
birthright;  and  precisely  because  the  war  to 
preserve  the  Union  was  justified  as  a  test 
whether  a  nation  "conceived  in  liberty,  and 
dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are 
equal,"  could  long  endure,  such  a  war  would 
have  been  meaningless  if,  in  preserving  the 
Union,  it  had  not  destroyed  the  one  thing 
which  made  the  preservation  of  the  Union 
useless.  In  effect,  therefore,  if  not  in  origin, 
the  Civil  War  was  a  war  for  the  abolition  of 
slavery  as  a  menace  to  popular  government 
and  of  everything  which  made  America  of 
peculiar  significance  to  the  world. 

Before  the  end  the  North  began  to  realize 
that  if  the  war  did  not  bring  about  the  de- 
struction of  slavery  it  would  have  been  fought 
in  vain.  No  question  was  on  President  Lin- 
coln's mind  more  than  precisely  this  problem 
of  the  relation  of  slavery  to  the  war.  Luke- 
warm conservatives  were  afraid  that  he  would 
use  his  power  as  commander-in-chief  of  the 
army  to  declare  the  slaves  emancipated;  and 
impatient  Abolitionists  criticized  him  for  tim- 
idly refusing  to  emancipate  them.  After 
eighteen  months  of  war,  Horace  Greeley,  in 
an  editorial  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  de- 
manded in  behalf  of  "twenty  millions"  of 
people  that  the  President  should  abandon  a 

209 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

policy  of  vacillation  and  come  out  at  once  in 
favor  of  emancipation.  In  reply  to  Greeley, 
Lincoln  wrote  a  brief  and  masterly  letter  in 
which  he  annihilated  his  passionate  critic  by 
a  simple  and  lucid  statement  of  his  policy. 

As  to  the  policy  I  "seem  to  be  pursuing,"  as  you  say, 
I  have  not  meant  to  leave  any  one  in  doubt.  I  would 
save  the  Union.  I  would  save  it  in  the  shortest  way 
under  the  Constitution.  The  sooner  the  national 
authority  can  be  restored  the  nearer  the  Union  will  be 
"the  Union  as  it  was."  If  there  be  those  who  would  not 
save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  save 
slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  If  there  be  those 
who  would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the 
same  time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them. 
My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the 
Union,  and  is  not  either  to  save  or  to  destroy  slavery. 
If  I  could  save  the  Union  without  freeing  any  slave, 
I  would  do  it;  if  I  could  save  the  Union  by  freeing  all 
the  slaves,  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by 
freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I  would  also 
do  that.  What  I  do  about  slavery  and  the  colored 
race  I  do  because  I  believe  it  helps  to  save  the  Union; 
and  what  I  forbear  I  forbear  because  I  do  not  believe 
it  would  help  to  save  the  Union.  I  shall  do  less  when- 
ever I  believe  what  I  am  doing  hurts  the  cause,  and  I 
shall  do  more  whenever  I  shall  believe  doing  more  will 
help  the  cause.  I  shall  try  to  correct  errors  when  shown 
to  be  errors,  and  I  shall  adopt  new  views  so  fast  as  they 
shall  appear  to  be  true  views. 

On  first  reading,  this  letter  seems  to  display 
a  marked  indifference  to  slavery,  and  one 

210 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

wonders  why  the  President  placed  the  preser- 
vation of  the  Union  above  everything  else. 
Probably  few  men  ever  hated  African  slavery 
with  a  more  intense  hatred  than  Abraham 
Lincoln.  Yet  he  put  the  safety  of  the  Union 
first.  The  reason  for  this  was  that  he  believed 
everything  else  depended  upon  it.  If  the 
Union  were  dissolved,  so  he  thought,  not 
only  would  the  bright  promise  of  free  govern- 
ment be  lost,  but  the  best  chance  of  freeing  the 
slaves  would  be  lost,  too.  Freedom  in  every 
sense,  in  the  personal  and  in  the  political 
sense,  depended  upon  preserving  the  Union. 
To  have  proclaimed  the  freedom  of  the  slaves 
would  have  been  a  mere  aimless  gesture  in 
the  air  if  the  South  could  not  be  brought 
back  into  the  Union.  The  question  which 
the  President  had  to  consider  was,  therefore, 
this:  What  effect  would  an  emancipation 
proclamation  have  upon  the  outcome  of  the 
war?  Would  it  strengthen  or  weaken  North- 
ern support  of  the  war?  Would  it  strengthen 
or  weaken  Southern  resistance  ? 

In  the  early  months  of  the  war,  when  the 
South  was  victorious  in  a  military  way,  the 
President  judged,  and  rightly,  that  a  procla- 
mation of  emancipation  would  strengthen  the 
Southern  States  in  their  determination  never 
to  re-enter  the  Union  with  the  North,  at  the 
same  time  that  it  would  alienate  a  great  body 

211 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  Northern  people  who  were  unwilling  to  fight 
for  the  freedom  of  the  negroes.  Above  all, 
the  President  was  endeavoring  to  win  over 
certain  "border"  slave  states — states  like 
Kentucky,  where  pro-slave  sentiment  was  not 
so  strong  and  where  a  good  proportion  of  the 
people  were  opposed  to  secession.  To  inter- 
fere with  slavery  would  tend  to  drive  these 
border  states  into  the  arms  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy.  The  President  was,  therefore, 
waiting  for  the  day  when  moderate  Northern 
sentiment  should  be  ready  for  the  policy  of 
emancipation,  and  when  the  attitude  of  the 
border  slave  states  would  no  longer  be  seriously 
affected  by  such  a  policy. 

But  aside  from  all  this,  Lincoln  was  looking 
beyond  the  war  to  the  conditions  that  would 
make  for  a  just  and  lasting  peace.  He  hoped 
for  a  peace  which,  without  conceding  the 
Southern  claims,  would  effect,  if  possible,  a 
genuine  reconciliation  between  the  two  sec- 
tions. If  the  Union  were  to  be  preserved,  the 
people  of  the  North  and  the  people  of  the 
South  would  have  to  live  together;  it  would 
be  better  if  they  could  live  together  in  har- 
mony, without  bitterness  and  rancor,  "with 
malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all." 
The  President  would  therefore  have  been 
glad  if  the  preservation  of  the  Union  could 
have  been  secured  and  slavery  abolished  by 

212 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

a  diplomatic  instead  of  by  a  military  victory. 
His  policy  in  respect  to  slavery  was  closely 
connected  with  this  idea.  In  the  first  years 
of  the  war  he  hoped  that  a  policy  of  emanci- 
pating the  slaves  with  compensation  to  the 
owners  might  win  over  a  sufficient  number  of 
the  slave  states  to  make  it  hopeless  for  the 
rest  to  continue  the  struggle.  If  this  could 
be  accomplished  the  great  objects  of  the  war 
would  be  attained ;  slavery  would  be  abolished 
and  the  Union  preserved — preserved  in  the 
most  effective  way,  without  the  aftermath  of 
sectional  bitterness  which  was  likely  to  follow 
a  war  waged  to  the  bitter  end  and  a  peace 
founded  upon  military  conquest  and  enforced 
at  the  point  of  the  sword. 

Unhappily,  this  outcome  was  impossible. 
Neither  the  North  nor  the  South  was  pre- 
pared to  accept  such  a  program;  the  South 
would  not  accept  emancipation  on  any  terms; 
the  North  would  not  concede  compensation. 
As  soon  as  the  President  was  convinced  of 
this,  he  was  ready  to  proclaim  emancipation 
as  a  military  measure,  and  it  is  a  significant 
fact  that  when  he  wrote  his  famous  reply  to 
Horace  Greeley  there  was  already  lying  in 
his  desk  the  draft  of  an  emancipation  proc- 
lamation. He  was  waiting  only  for  a  favor- 
able turn  in  the  military  situation.  Accord- 
ingly, on  the  23d  of  September,  1862,  six  days 

213 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

after  General  Lee's  invasion  of  Maryland  was 
checked  at  the  battle  of  Antietam,  President 
Lincoln  proclaimed  the  unconditional  freedom 
of  all  the  slaves  within  those  states  which 
should  still  be  in  arms  against  the  federal 
government  on  the  ist  of  January,  1863. 
But  the  South  was  confident  of  victory.  At 
the  opening  of  the  new  year  none  of  the 
confederated  states  had  made  its  peace  with 
the  federal  government.  The  war  was,  there- 
fore, fought  to  the  bitter  end ;  and  the  South- 
ern States,  without  their  slaves  and  without 
compensation  for  them,  were  compelled  to  re- 
enter  the  Union  as  the  result  of  a  complete 
military  conquest. 

The  Civil  War  settled  two  questions:  it 
abolished  chattel  slavery,  and  it  preserved 
the  Union  in  the  sense  that  it  established 
the  doctrine  that  this  is  "an  indestructible 
union  of  indestructible  states."  These  ques- 
tions the  war  settled  permanently.  Two  other 
questions,  which  grew  out  of  the  war,  were 
left  for  the  future:  the  reconciliation  of  the 
Southern  people,  and  the  status  of  the  liber- 
ated colored  race. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  four  years  of 
civil  war,  carried  on  to  the  bitter  end,  would 
leave  their  heritage  of  sectional  rancor  and 
animosity.  Under  the  circumstances,  the  task 
of  reconstructing  the  political  union  on  just 

214 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

principles,  and  in  a  manner  likely  to  reconcile 
the  Southern  people  to  their  defeat  as  quickly 
as  possible  and  to  enable  them  to  resume  their 
political  functions  without  undue  humiliation, 
was  an  exceedingly  difficult  one.  It  might 
have  been  accomplished  had  President  Lin- 
coln been  spared  to  shape  the  policy  of  recon- 
struction in  the  humane  and  enlightened  spirit 
of  the  second  Inaugural  Address—  "With 
malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all." 
But  such  a  spirit  was  not  to  prevail.  At  the 
moment  of  victory  the  President  was  shot 
down  in  cold  blood  by  John  Wilkes  Booth,  a 
self-constituted  avenger  of  the  South.  It  \v;is 
the  most  senseless  crime  recorded  in  political 
history,  for  it  deprived  the  South  of  its  best 
friend  and  the  North  of  its  wisest  leader—  the 
one  indispensable  reconciler  of  a  disunited  and 
embittered  nation. 

President  Lincoln's  just  and  humane  policy 
of  reconstruction  was  adopted  by  his  suc- 
cessor; but  Andrew  Johnson,  although  an  able 
and  well-meaning  man,  was  in  origin  and  by 
temperament  wholly  unfitted  for  the  high  re- 
sponsibility which  was  thus  thrust  upon  him. 
He  assumed  all  the  authority  of  his  office, 
although  it  was  a  mere  accident  and  no  popu- 
lar mandate  that  placed  him  in  it.  No  man 
ever  needed  a  reasonable  and  conciliatory 
temper  so  much  who  possessed  so  little  of 
15  215 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

either.  An  irreconcilable  misunderstanding 
at  once  developed  between  the  President  and 
the  Congress,  in  which  the  latter  gained  the 
upper  hand,  and  a  disastrous  policy  of  re- 
construction was  finally  carried  out  in  a  futile 
spirit  of  punishment  and  revenge  under  the 
leadership  of  embittered  fanatics  such  as 
Charles  Sumner  and  Thaddeus  Stevens.  The 
Southern  people  accepted  their  defeat,  but 
they  were  unwilling  to  confer  immediately 
upon  all  the  freedmen  those  civil  and  political 
rights  which  would  have  given  to  a  densely 
ignorant  and  hopelessly  incompetent  race  an 
ascendancy  in  many  Southern  states.  The 
North  in  turn  refused  to  admit  the  Southern 
States  into  the  Union  on  any  other  terms. 
To  attain  these  ends,  the  South  was  accord- 
ingly subjected  for  some  years  to  military 
occupation;  the  Southern  whites  were  prac- 
tically excluded  from  all  political  functions; 
and  under  the  protection  of  the  Northern 
army,  the  negroes,  unscrupulously  led  and 
exploited  by  Northern  political  adventurers 
called  "Carpet-baggers,"  organized  the  new 
state  governments  which  accepted  the  North- 
ern terms,  in  the  form  of  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  to  the  Constitution,  and  were 
then  admitted  to  the  Union. 

The  Carpet-bag  regime,  in  which  the  whites 
took  practically  no  part,  was  a  travesty  upon 

216 


AN   EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

the  principle  of  self-government  and  a  dis- 
grace from  every  point  of  view.  It  precipi- 
tated a  condition  of  confusion,  of  political 
corruption,  and  of  social  anarchy  such  as  the 
war  itself  never  produced;  and  although  it 
forced  the  South  to  accept  the  Northern  terms, 
it  failed  to  accomplish  the  object  which  those 
terms  were  designed  to  accomplish — it  failed 
to_confer  permanently  upon  the  colored  race 
an  equality  of  civil  and  political  rights.  As 
soon  as  the  Northern  army  was  removed  the 
Southern  whites  resumed  control,  and  the 
negroes  were  immediately,  and  have  since  re- 
mained, practically  disfranchised.  In  form 
the  Union  was  restored,  but  in  spirit  it  re- 
mained divided ;  and  the  aftermath  of  bitter- 
ness and  rancor  which  divided  the  sections  for 
a  generation  was  due  not  so  much  to  the  war 
itself  as  it  was  to  the  experience  of  the  recon- 
struction era.  The  Southern  people  accepted 
defeat,  they  accepted  the  abolition  of  slavery, 
and  they  were  in  the  way  of  recognizing  that 
they  fought  not  only  a  losing  cause,  but  a  bad 
one;  but  the  ruthless,  undemocratic,  and  hu- 
miliating domination  forced  upon  them  dur- 
ing the  Carpet-bag  regime,  and  the  economic 
exploitation  which  accompanied  it,  they  could 
not  forget  and  did  not  forgive.  The  result 
was  a  "Solid  South,"  which  remained  un- 
reconciled for  forty  years,  and  which  to  this 

217 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

day  votes  as  a  unit  against  the  Republican 
party,  which  sought  in  vain  to  confer  political 
privileges  and  to  reconstitute  national  unity 
at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  The  good  results 
of  "unconditional  surrender"  in  the  military 
sense — of  General  Lee  at  Appomattox — were 
half  lost  by  the  "unconditional  surrender" 
in  the  political  and  moral  sense  which  the 
North  imposed  upon  the  South  after  it  had 
admitted  defeat  and  laid  down  its  arms. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  slavery  was  only 
the  worst  solution  of  the  negro  problem,  and 
that  while  the  war  abolished  slavery  as  a  bad 
solution  of  the  problem,  it  did  nothing  to 
abolish  the  problem  itself.  This  is  profoundly 
true;  and  it  was  in  large  part  because  the 
Northern  leaders  failed  to  recognize  this  truth 
that  the  reconstruction  policy  proved  a  fiasco. 
The  negro  could  be  freed  by  force  of  arms; 
by  force  of  arms  civil  and  political  rights 
could  be  conferred  upon  him  in  a  formal  and 
legal  sense;  but  force  of  arms  was  helpless 
to  make  these  rights  a  reality  because  neither 
force  of  arms  nor  legal  decrees  could  bring 
about  an  assimilation  of  the  two  races  or 
compel  the  ancient  masters  to  recognize  their 
former  slaves  as  equals.  Thus  it  is  that 
although  the  war  abolished  slavery,  and  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment  conferred  civil  and 
political  rights  upon  the  freedmen,  the  prob- 

218 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Jem  of  the  colored  race,  and  the  problem  of 
making  our  democracy  work  in  respect  to  the 
colored  race,  remains  still  unsolved. 

There  are  to-day  about  ten  million  people  of 
African  or  of  mixed  African  and  Caucasian 
descent  in  the  United  States — mainly  in  the 
South;  and  they  remain  to-day,  as  they  were 
before  the  war,  an  inferior  class.  It  could  not, 
of  course,  be  otherwise  than  that  a  people  so 
long  enslaved  and  so  recently  emancipated 
should  still  be,  on  the  whole,  poorer,  more 
ignorant,  and  more  debased  than  the  white 
descendants  of  people  who  for  centuries  have 
been  among  the  most  civilized  in  the  world. 
This  in  itself  would  not  make  the  problem 
of  the  colored  race  a  special  and  particularly 
difficult  one.  There  are  perhaps  as  many 
poor,  ignorant,  and  debased  people  among  the 
white  inhabitants  of  the  United  States.  What 
makes  the  problem  of  the  colored  race  a  serious 
one  is  the  fact  that  they  are  a  class  apart. 
The  inferiority  of  the  colored  man  is  not  an 
individual,  but  a  racial  matter ;  however  pros- 
perous, intelligent,  or  cultivated  a  black  man 
becomes,  he  is  still,  in  virtue  of  being  a  black 
man,  in  a  position  of  inferiority  as  compared 
with  white  men  of  similar  attainments  and 
capacities. 

The  amalgamation  of  the  two  races  would 
in  any  case  be  slow  because  of  the  radical 

219 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

differences,  mental  and  physical,  which  keep 
them  apart.  But  that  this  would  not  be  an 
insuperable  barrier  is  proved  by  the  large 
number  of  people  of  mixed  blood  among  the 
colored  population.  What  the  whites  object 
to  is  intermarriage  with  negroes,  and  to  asso- 
ciating on  equal  terms  with  them;  and  the 
chief  reason  for  this  is  the  indelible  stigma 
which  the  tradition  of  slavery  has  placed  upon 
them.  The  Southern  people  very  frankly 
maintain  the  pre-war  attitude  of  mind  in  re- 
spect to  their  relations  with  the  colored  race. 
They  like  the  negro  well  enough  in  a  con- 
descending way;  they  have  for  him  less  in- 
stinctive physical  repulsion  than  the  North- 
erner has,  and  they  are  even  more  disposed 
to  treat  him  kindly — as  long  as  he  "keeps  his 
place."  But  his  "place"  is  still  one  of  in- 
feriority; in  every  respect,  except  in  legal 
status,  the  colored  race  is  still  regarded  in 
the  South  as  a  servile  and  an  outcast  class. 
The  attitude  of  the  Northerner  toward  the 
negro  is  much  the  same,  although  the  North- 
erner is  less  frank  in  admitting  it.  On  the 
whole,  the  Northerner  dislikes  the  negro  more 
than  the  Southerner  does,  understands  him 
less  well,  has  less  patience  with  his  habits 
and  idiosyncrasies;  and  however  much  he 
may  say  that  this  repulsion  is  a  mere  preju- 
dice, that  the  colored  man  is  "as  good  as 

220 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

any  one  else"  and  ought  to  be  treated  as  an 
equal,  he  does  not  commonly  treat  him  as 
an  equal;  in  spite  of  theories  and  good  in- 
tentions, some  subtle  repulsion  keeps  the  two 
races  apart,  in  the  North  no  less  than  in  the 
South. 

The  negro  is  not  only  in  a  position  of  social 
inferiority;  in  the  economic  field  he  labors 
at  a  great  disadvantage.  Carefully  prepared 
statistics  show  that  the  per  capita  wealth  of 
the  negroes  throughout  the  country  is  $34, 
while  that  of  the  whites  is  $885  in  the  South 
and  $1,320  in  the  North.  That  a  people  so 
recently  emancipated  should  be  poor  is  nat- 
ural enough,  but  the  natural  economic  back- 
wardness of  the  negroes  is  accentuated  by  the 
social  prejudice  which  virtually  closes  many 
occupations  to  them,  or  restricts  their  ad- 
vancement in  such  occupations  as  they  may 
enter.  Apart  from  all  natural  or  racial  handi- 
caps, it  is  still  true  that  the  negro  in  the 
United  States  does  not  enjoy  an  equal  eco- 
nomic opportunity  with  the  white  man  of 
similar  intelligence  and  industry. 

To  the  social  and  economic  disadvantages 
must  finally  be  added  a  marked  political  dis- 
crimination. The  federal  Constitution  con- 
fers upon  the  negro  the  same  right  of  voting 
which  white  men  possess ;  but  the  social  preju- 
dice and  economic  inequality  under  which  he 

221 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

lives  and  labors,  in  the  Southern  States  es- 
pecially, give  such  an  ascendancy  to  the 
whites  that  it  is  possible  for  them  practically 
to  exclude  the  negro  from  any  effective  ex- 
ercise of  his  political  rights.  In  spite  of  the 
Constitution,  the  colored  people  are  in  fact  a 
disfranchised  people  in  all  the  Southern  states. 
Thus  it  happens  that,  so  far  as  the  ten  million 
colored  people  are  concerned,  American  de- 
mocracy does  not  work,  or  at  least  it  works 
badly.  The  negro  is  an  American,  but  he  is 
an  American  who  remains  apart,  unassimilated 
with  the  white  population,  economically  still 
a  servile  class,  socially  inferior,  and  politically 
unfranchised. 

If  slavery  was  a  menace  to  free  institutions, 
the  existence  of  this  unassimilated  class,  which 
is  regarded  as  inferior  and  practically  treated 
as  such,  is  also  a  menace,  in  however  less  a 
degree,  to  free  institutions.  It  may  be  true 
that  the  United  States  was  "conceived  in 
liberty,  and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that 
all  men  are  created  equal";  but  it  must  be 
admitted  that  there  is  an  ugly  contrast  be- 
tween the  actual  fact  and  the  ideal  profession 
so  long  as  one-tenth  of  the  population  is  de- 
prived of  its  liberty  and  treated  as  inferior 
on  account  of  its  "race,  color,  and  previous 
condition  of  servitude."  Perhaps  the  problem 
is  unsolvable;  if  so,  it  must  be  noted  as  one 

222 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

of  those  situations  to  which  our  democratic 
formula  does  not  apply. 

No  doubt  the  practical  application  of  any 
ideal  of  government  and  society  can  never 
be  perfect;  and  it  is  obvious  enough  that 
democracy  works  best  in  communities  where 
there  is  a  great  degree  of  homogeneity  in  the 
population.  There  are  exceptions  to  the  rule, 
as,  for  example,  Switzerland  (even  in  Switzer- 
land it  is  a  question  whether  the  lack  of 
homogeneity  is  not  more  apparent  than  real) ; 
but  generally  speaking,  where  racial  or  cult- 
ural or  economic  interests  tend  to  divide  the 
population  into  distinct  groups,  and  where  the 
difference  between  the  groups  tends  to  be- 
come deep-seated  and  permanent,  there  the 
practical  application  of  democratic  principles 
becomes  difficult  or  impossible.  Such  group 
differences  are  common  and  chronic  in  many 
European  communities;  but  in  the  United 
States  the  unassimilated  negro  group  is  the 
more  striking  phenomenon  precisely  because 
of  the  astonishing  rapidity  with  which  the 
great  number  of  foreign  immigrants  has  been 
assimilated.  The  people  of  the  United  States 
have  been  recruited  from  every  country  of 
Europe;  but  hitherto  the  characteristics  of 
nationality,  of  language  and  culture,  which 
distinguish  the  immigrant  when  he  arrives 

have  disappeared  within  a  generation;    his 

223 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

children  have  become  Americans,  indistin- 
guishable from  the  general  type.  Hitherto  the 
negro,  and  perhaps  certain  Oriental  peoples 
like  the  Chinese,  have  seemed  to  be  the  only 
people  whom  the  American  nation  has  not 
been  able  to  assimilate  readily. 

But  in  recent  years  the  process  of  Amer- 
icanizing even  the  European  immigrants  has 
come  to  be  less  rapid  and  less  complete. 
There  are  now  more  numerous  and  larger 
groups  of  people  speaking  a  foreign  language 
in  the  United  States  than  ever  before;  and 
these  groups,  under  certain  conditions,  tend 
more  and  more  to  persist  as  groups  apart, 
like  the  negro  unassimilated  to  the  general 
type,  and  like  the  negro  regarded  in  some 
measure  as  economically  servile  and  socially 
inferior.  The  negro  problem  is  thus  no  iso- 
lated problem;  it  is  a  part,  although  no  doubt 
the  most  difficult  part,  of  a  larger  problem 
which  confronts  democracy  in  this  country. 
This  problem  is  the  problem  of  Americaniza- 
tion— of  assimilating  diverse  racial  and  eco- 
nomic groups  to  a  common  type,  with  com- 
mon interests  and  ideals. 


VIII 

DEMOCRACY  AND   IMMIGRATION 


IT  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine is  the  expression  of  a  policy  of  selfish 
isolation.  By  insisting  upon  this  policy,  so 
it  is  claimed,  the  United  States  virtually  says 
to  Europe,  "Since  we  have  got,  by  our  own 
efforts  and  the  favor  of  Providence,  a  very 
fine  country,  we  prefer  to  enjoy  it  ourselves; 
you  will  therefore  kindly  mind  your  own 
business  and  we  will  mind  ours."  This  is 
indeed  the  substance,  put  in  very  undiplo- 
matic language,  of  what  the  United  States 
has  said  to  the  governments  of  Europe,  but 
it  is  the  very  opposite  of  what  it  has  said  to 
the  people  of  Europe.  To  the  people  of  Eu- 
rope the  United  States  has  said:  ".We  do  not 
want  your  political  system  over  here,  but  we 
do  want  you — the  more  the  better." 

To  this  generous  invitation  the  people  of 
Europe  have  responded.  From  colonial  days 
they  have  come  in  ever-increasing  numbers, 

225 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  in  an  ever  greater  diversity  of  language, 
of  religion,  and  of  nationality.  In  the  year 
1910  more  than  a  million  foreigners,  excluding 
those  from  Canada  and  Mexico,  came  to  this 
country.  If  they  had  all  landed  at  the  port  of 
New  York,  as  in  fact  most  of  them  did,  and 
if  their  arrival  had  been  uniformly  distributed 
throughout  the  year,  one  might  picture  them 
coming  down  an  imaginary  gang-plank  at 
Ellis  Island  about  3,000  every  day,  120  every 
hour,  day  and  night,  2  every  minute,  a  con- 
tinuous stream  of  people  of  both  sexes,  of 
every  race  and  language  and  religion  of  Eu- 
rope, abandoning  their  native  land  to  come 
to  America.  Why  do  they  come?  What  do 
they  seek? 

The  motives  of  the  immigrants  are  of  course 
many,  varying  with  the  country,  the  class,  the 
race  from  which  they  come;  but  in  a  general 
way  it  may  be  said  that  the  people  of  Europe 
have  come  to  the  United  States  in  such  large 
numbers  because  it  has  been,  or  they  have 
imagined  it  to  be,  a  land  of  liberty,  of  oppor- 
tunity, above  all,  of  economic  opportunity. 
What  America  was  to  the  European  peasant 
in  the  eighteenth  century  is  indicated  by  St. 
John  de  Crevecceur's  description  in  his  Letters 
of  an  American  Farmer,  printed  before  the 
Revolution.  In  America,  he  says,  the  rewards 

of  a  man's  industry 

226 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

follow  with  equal  steps  the  progress  of  his  labor;  this 
labor  is  founded  on  the  basis  of  self-interest.  Can  it 
want  a  stronger  allurement?  Wives  and  children,  who 
before  in  vain  demanded  a  morsel  of  bread,  now  fat 
and  frolicksome,  gladly  help  their  father  to  clear  those 
fields  whence  exuberant  crops  are  to  arise  to  feed  them 
all;  without  any  part  being  claimed  either  by  a  despotic 
prince,  a  rich  abbot,  or  a  mighty  lord. 

More  than  a  century  later  the  United  States 
was  still  regarded  as  the  land  of  economic 
opportunity.  Mr.  Warne,  in  his  book  en- 
titled, The  Immigrant  Invasion,  quotes  the 
following  statement  from  the  United  States 
consular  reports: 

It  would  be  difficult  to  state  any  one  particular 
reason  why  these  plain,  poor,  hard-working  people 
from  the  plains  of  Russia  and  the  hills  and  valleys  ot 
Austria,  should  leave  their  Fatherlands,  their  humble 
homes,  their  friends  and  the  traditions  of  their  fore- 
fathers, and  scramble  for  passage  on  a  steamer  bound 
for  a  far-off,  strange  country.  It  cannot  be  that  their 
home  country  is  overcrowded,  for  the  majority  of  them 
crowd  into  our  cities.  Undoubtedly,  in  some  cases  they 
leave  because  they  love  peace  and  resent  forced  military 
service.  Again,  others  forsake  their  old  homes,  impelled 
by  the  love  of  freedom.  But  of  such  idealists  there  are 
probably  very  few  indeed.  The  vast  majority  go  be- 
cause our  country  is  known  to  them  as  the  land  of 
promise,  the  land  of  opportunities  greater  than  their 
country  can  offer.  The  great  discontent  among  the 
laboring  classes  of  Europe,  stimulated  by  rumors  of 
great  prosperity  in  the  United  States,  is  the  prime 
cause  of  this  wonderful  exodus. 

227 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

For  a  hundred  years  the  peasants  of  Europe 
have  echoed  the  sentiment  of  Goethe^- 
"  America,  du  hast  es  besser!"  They  have  come 
to  America  because,  in  contrast  with  Europe, 
America  has  the  best  of  it.  What  have  they 
found  in  America?  Have  they  found  the 
freedom,  the  economic  opportunity  which 
they  sought  ?  What  have  they  contributed  to 
America  ?  How  have  they  modified  the  national 
character?  Have  they  furthered  or  retarded 
the  great  experiment  in  democracy?  These 
are  questions  of  importance  in  any  considera- 
tion of  American  ideals  and  institutions. 


II 

The  average  American  is  scarcely  aware  of 
the  continuous  influx  of  foreigners.  He  does 
not  see  them  landing  every  day  at  Ellis  Island. 
He  rarely  comes  into  any  direct  contact  with 
them,  either  in  the  great  industrial  plants  or 
in  the  slums  of  the  great  cities  where  they  live 
together  in  comparative  isolation.  He  does 
not  even  see  many  of  them  on  the  streets, 
because  his  streets  are  not  their  streets.  If 
his  attention  is  called  to  the  question  of  im- 
migration he  is  likely  to  take  it  as  a  matter  of 
course,  as  something  that  has  always  been 
going  on,  and  he  will  very  likely  dismiss  the 
whole  problem  by  saying,  "Well,  we  absorb 

228 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

these  people  very  easily;  our  institutions 
Americanize  them,  make  new  men  of  them, 
in  the  second  generation."  This,  of  course,  is 
precisely  the  important  question.  Do  we 
Americanize  them?  Do  they,  by  any  chance, 
or  to  any  extent,  de-Americanize  us? 

If  we  wish  to  get  the  average  American 
really  interested  in  this  question,  it  will  be 
well  to  lay  before  him  a  good  many  statistics. 
Americans  think  in  numbers  more  easily  than 
in  any  other  way.  They  have  a  saying  that 
"  Figures  don't  lie,"  and  if  you  can  make  them 
see  the  immigrant  question  in  terms  of  "fig- 
ures" it  will  at  once  take  on  a  vividness  that 
it  could  not  otherwise  have.  First  of  all, 
therefore,  let  us  startle  our  average  American 
by  telling  him  that  in  1910  there  were  in  the 
United  States  13,000,000  inhabitants  who 
were  born  in  some  foreign  country.  This  was 
roughly  one-seventh  of  the  total  population; 
and  this  means  that  if  these  13,000,000  people 
were  uniformly  distributed  throughout  the 
country,  the  average  American,  when  he  went 
about  his  business  or  pleasure,  would  find 
that  one  out  of  every  seven  persons  he  met 
was,  in  respect  to  birth,  nationality,  and  in- 
herited traditions,  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
a  foreigner.  Only  a  very  small  per  cent,  of 
these  foreign-born  were  under  fifteen  years 
of  age  when  they  arrived  in  the  country ;  and 

229 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  average  American  may  therefore  rightly 
be  told  that  he,  assisted  by  six  other  average 
Americans,  is  in  duty  bound  to  "absorb"  and 
"Americanize"  one  full-grown  foreigner;  and 
furthermore,  at  the  present  rate  of  immigra- 
tion we  can  give  him  only  about  sixteen  years 
to  do  it  in,  for  at  the  end  of  that  period  we 
shall  have  another  foreigner  to  turn  over  to 
him  and  his  six  associates. 

If  the  business  were  managed  in  this  way, 
the  average  American  would  doubtless  think 
it  a  bigger  job  than  he  had  supposed.  But 
•  another  thing  which  the  American  does  not 
sufficiently  realize  is  that  the  number  of  im- 
migrants is  constantly  increasing.  This  in- 
crease may  be  made  vivid  by  the  following 
figures.  Between  1820  and  1910  the  total 
immigration  from  foreign  countries,  excluding 
Canada  and  Mexico,  was  about  28,000,000; 
between  1850  and  1910  it  was  about  25,000,- 
ooo;  between  1880  and  1910  it  was  about 
19,000,000;  between  1900  and  1910  it  was 
about  9,000,000;  and  between  1905  and  1910 
it  was  about  5,000,000.  If  the  number  of 
immigrants  had  been  as  great  every  year  from 
1820  to  1910  as  it  was  in  the  year  1910,  the 
total  immigration  for  the  period  1820-1910 
would  have  been  about  90,000,000  instead  of 
28,000,000.  Therefore  we  must  tell  our  aver- 
age American  that  if  the  number  of  immi- 

230 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

grants  goes  on  increasing  in  the  future  as  it 
has  done  in  the  past,  he  and  his  six  asso- 
ciates will  be  required,  as  time  goes  on,  to 
complete  the  process  of  Americanizing  one 
foreigner  within  considerably  less  than  sixteen 
years. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  immigrants  are  not 
uniformly  distributed  throughout  the  coun- 
try; and  while  it  is  this  fact  that  enables  the 
average  American  to  dismiss  the  problem  as 
one  that  easily  solves  itself,  it  is  in  reality 
this  fact  that  makes  the  problem  more  difficult 
than  it  would  otherwise  be.  In  some  parts 
of  the  country  there  are  almost  no  immigrants 
at  all;  in  other  parts  they  are  more  numerous 
than  the  native-born.  In  the  state  of  Kansas, 
for  example,  the  people  are  almost  entirely 
relieved  of  the  task  of  Americanization.  But 
in  New  York  City  only  about  one  person  in 
five  is  a  native-born  of  native  parents ;  the  rest 
are  either  native-born  of  foreign  parents  or  are 
foreign-born;  about  1,500,000,  that  is  to  say, 
about  one-third  of  the  total  population  are 
foreign-born.  This  situation  concentrates  the 
problem  of  Americanization  in  certain  areas; 
New  York  has  much  more  and  Kansas  much 
less  than  its  proper  share  of  the  common  task. 
And  in  recent  years  there  has  been  a  much 
greater  concentration  of  immigrants  in  certain 
areas  than  formerly;  so  that  the  problem  of 
16  231 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Americanization  is  becoming  a  more  difficult 
one,  not  only  because  the  number  of  immi- 
grants is  increasing,  but  also  because  they  are 
being  distributed  less  uniformly  among  the 
people  as  a  whole. 

The  difficulty  of  Americanizing  any  given 
number  of  foreigners,  whether  they  are  more 
or  less  uniformly  distributed,  will  depend  also 
upon  what  kind  of  foreigners  they  are.  It 
will  obviously  be  easier  to  make  an  American 
out  of  a  foreigner  who  already  speaks  the 
English  language  than  out  of  one  who  does 
not;  and  easier  to  make  an  American  out  of 
an  intelligent  than  out  of  an  illiterate  foreigner, 
whatever  his  nationality.  If  we  look  at  im- 
migration from  this  point  of  view,  we  find 
that  in  the  decade  ending  1850  about  two- 
thirds  of  the  total  number  of  immigrants  came 
from  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  and  Canada,  and 
were  accordingly  English-speaking  people; 
whereas  in  the  decade  ending  1910  consider- 
ably less  than  one-third  came  from  these 
countries.  The  proportion  of  foreigners  speak- 
ing an  alien  tongue  has  therefore  constantly 
increased.  Besides,  the  quality  of  the  immi- 
grant has  apparently  deteriorated.  Of  the 
immigrants  who  came  prior  to  the  decade 
ending  in  1880,  only  about  3  per  cent,  were 
illiterate — that  is,  could  neither  read  nor 
write  their  own  language,  whatever  it  was; 

232 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

but  of  those  who  have  come  since  1880,  about 
35  per  cent,  were  illiterate. 

There  is  still  another  factor  which  enters 
into  the  problem  of  Americanization.  A  for- 
eigner who  comes  to  live  in  America  will  think 
of  himself  as  an  American  much  more  readily, 
and  will  take  on  American  habits  and  customs 
much  more  rapidly,  if  he  finds  that  he  is  able 
to  engage  in  the  same  occupations  that  native 
Americans  engage  in,  to  live  in  the  same  kind 
of  houses,  eat  the  same  kind  of  food,  wear 
the  same  kind  of  clothes,  and  enjoy  the  same 
kind  of  recreation  and  amusements.  He  will 
then  feel  that  he  is  an  American  because  he 
is  getting  out  of  life  the  same  things  that 
the  average  American  gets.  But  if  he  finds 
himself  doing  only  the  more  disagreeable 
kinds  of  work,  receiving  the  lowest  wages, 
and  consequently  living  a  life  which  no  na- 
tive American  will  consent  to  live,  then  he 
is  likely  to  feel  that  America  is  not  the  prom- 
ised land  of  opportunity  which  he  supposed 
it  to  be.  Since  he  gets  less  than  Americans 
get,  he  will  not  feel  himself  an  American, 
which  is  much  the  same  thing  as  not  being 
one. 

Now,  in  fact,  this  is  coming  to  be  more 
and  more  the  case.  The  immigrant  finds  him- 
self working  in  certain  industries  at  wages 
which  Americans  will  not  accept,  and  living 

233 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  certain  sections  of  our  great  cities  under 
conditions  that  are  often  worse,  and  rarely 
better,  than  those  in  which  he  lived  in  the 
Old  World.  He  finds  himself  associating 
mainly  or  altogether  with  other  foreigners  like 
himself.  Since  they  do  not  commonly  meet 
or  deal  with  native-born  Americans,  there  is 
slight  incentive  and  no  necessity  for  learning 
the  language,  or  for  adopting  American  cus- 
toms. They  often  remain  foreigners,  foreign- 
ers in  appearance  and  foreigners  at  heart. 
Since  America  exploits  them,  they  will,  so 
far  as  they  can,  exploit  America.  Their  aim 
too  often  is,  not  to  become  Americans,  but 
to  return  to  Europe  when  they  have  acquired 
a  little  money,  which  many  of  them  do  acquire 
by  good  luck,  or  by  dint  of  living  the  barest 
and  most  squalid  lives.  Since  1880,  about 
40  per  cent,  of  the  total  number  of  immigrants 
have  gone  back  to  Europe,  and  of  this  40 
per  cent,  about  two-thirds  have  remained 
there.  These  returning  immigrants  do  not 
commonly  tell  their  friends  that  America  is 
the  promised  land,  the  land  of  freedom  and 
of  equal  opportunity.  They  describe  America 
as  they  have  found  it — a  country  dominated 
by  capitalists,  a  sordid  bourgeois  society  with- 
out ideals,  a  land  of  "dollar-chasers"  where 
wealth  controls  the  government  and  exploits 
the  people. 

234 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in 

The  average  American  would  be  somewhat 
surprised  to  learn  all  this;  he  would  perhaps 
be  a  little  skeptical,  because  he  has  always 
understood  that  the  ease  with  which  foreign- 
ers have  been  absorbed  and  Americanized  is 
one  of  the  seven  wonders  of  the  world.  Amer- 
ica has  been  called  the  "  melting-pot "  —a  con- 
tinuously bubbling  sociological  kettle  into 
which  we  have  grown  accustomed  to  thinking 
you  could  throw  no  matter  what  number  or 
variety  of  foreign  elements,  without  materially 
modifying  the  resulting  product;  the  end  of 
the  melting  was  supposed  always  to  be  the 
pure  gold  of  Americanism.  This,  according 
to  the  average  American,  is  what  comes  of 
having  true  democratic  institutions. 

It  is  true  that  for  the  most  part  the  melting- 
pot  has  worked  very  well.  Until  recent  years 
the  successful  transformation  of  the  foreign- 
born  population  into  "typical"  Americans 
within  a  single  generation  has  been  one  of  the 
notable  achievements  of  the  United  States. 
It  is  true  also  that  this  happy  result  has  been 
due  in  some  measure  to  the  character  of  our 
institutions;  but  it  has  been  due  far  more  to 
the  absence  of  those  conditions  which  make 
Americanization  difficult — it  has  been  due  to 
the  dispersion  of  the  immigrants  among  the 

235 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

mass  of  the  people,  to  the  relative  excellence 
of  the  immigrant  population,  and  to  the  oppor- 
tunity of  the  immigrant  to  live  the  life  and 
enjoy  the  rewards  of  the  ordinary  American. 
Generally  speaking,  these  favorable  conditions 
prevailed  up  to  a  period  which  may  be  roughly 
placed  in  the  decade  from  1880  to  1890.  It 
will  be  noted  that  this  is  also  the  date  which 
marks  the  end  of  the  era  of  an  abundance  ot 
free  land,  the  end  of  strictly  frontier  condi- 
tions. The  coincidence  is  not  accidental;  on 
the  contrary,  the  problem  of  immigration  and 
of  the  Americanization  of  the  foreign-born 
is  intimately  connected  with  the  disappear- 
ance of  free  land,  and  with  the  industrial 
transformation  which  has  followed  the  dis- 
appearance of  free  land. 

In  the  earlier  period — using  this  term  to 
designate  roughly  the  period  before  1880 — 
the  immigrant  was  most  likely  to  be  Irish  or 
German,  or  if  he  was  neither  of  these  he  was 
almost  sure  to  be  Scotch,  Welsh,  Canadian,  or 
English.  Not  until  the  decade  ending  in  1870 
did  the  Scandinavians  begin  to  come;  not 
until  the  next  decade  did  the  immigration  from 
southeastern  Europe  begin.  The  great  Irish 
migration  of  the  period  1840-80  was  largely 
due  to  intolerable  conditions  at  home — to  bad 
harvests  and  to  bad  laws;  and  it  was,  on  the 
whole,  the  most  intelligent  and  energetic  of 

236 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

the  Irish  peasantry  that  came  to  America. 
The  German  migration  to  the  United  States 
has  been  pretty  constant,  but  it  reached  its 
greatest  extent  between  1850  and  1890.  In 
this  period,  powerful  influences  in  driving 
Germans  to  America  were  the  failure  of  the 
liberal  political  movements  of  1848,  the  harsh 
military  service  imposed  upon  the  people,  the 
relative  lack  of  industrial  opportunity.  Aside 
from  the  Germans,  practically  all  of  our  im- 
migrants spoke  English  as  their  native  tongue; 
and  among  them,  as  among  the  Germans  also, 
the  percentage  of  illiterates  was  very  low.  In 
addition  to  this,  the  number  of  immigrants  in 
this  early  period  who  returned  to  Europe  was 
small;  and  while  the  fact  that  an  immigrant 
remained  permanently  in  the  United  States 
does  not  necessarily  mean  that  he  came  with 
that  intention,  the  presumption  is  that  he 
did  so;  and  therefore  we  may  say  probably 
that  a  great  proportion  of  the  early  immigrants 
came  to  this  country  with  minds  favorably 
disposed  to  becoming  American  citizens.  In 
all  of  these  respects  our  early  immigrants  were 
generally,  by  virtue  of  their  English  speech, 
of  their  intelligence  and  character,  and  of  the 
state  of  mind  with  which  they  contemplated 
their  new  home,  a  class  of  people  whom  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  Americanize. 

The  process  of  Americanization  was  greatly 
237 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

facilitated  by  the  situation  in  which  the  im- 
migrant was  likely  to  find  himself  after  he 
arrived.  The  Irishman  was  more  disposed 
than  any  others  to  settle  in  the  cities,  but  even 
in  the  cities  opportunity  was  not  lacking. 
Wages  were  high,  and  the  industrious  men 
soon  enjoyed  a  way  of  life  which  would  have 
been  thought  luxurious  in  old  Ireland,  while 
the  clever  ones  found  in  local  politics  an  open- 
ing which  no  one  has  ever  excelled  the  sons 
of  Erin  in  making  the  most  of.  Nevertheless, 
a  great  many  Irish,  and  the  great  proportion 
of  other  immigrants,  avoided  the  cities.  They 
either  came  with  the  intention  of  becoming 
farmers  or  the  liberal  pre-emption  and  home- 
stead laws  made  them  such  after  they  ar- 
rived. Indeed,  the  striking  aspect  of  immi- 
gration before  1890  is  the  steady  flow  of  the 
new-comers  into  the  great  agricultural  North- 
west. In  the  decade  between  1840  and  1850 
the  total  foreign-born  population  of  the  North 
Central  states  was  only  641,000,  while  that 
of  the  North  Atlantic  states  was  1,304,000; 
whereas  in  the  decade  from  1870  to  1880  the 
number  in  the  North  Atlantic  states  was 
2,815,000,  while  the  number  in  the  North 
Central  states  had  risen  to  2,917,000.  Be- 
sides, in  this  early  period  the  concentration 
in  the  cities  was  much  less  than  it  has  since 
become;  so  that,  generally  speaking,  a  very 

238 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

large  percentage  of  the  early  immigrants  were 
dispersed  in  the  rural  agricultural  communi- 
ties, or  in  the  small  towns  which  are  essentially 
parts  of  these  communities;  and  this  was  par- 
ticularly true  of  the  Germans — that  is  to  say, 
almost  the  only  group  that  spoke  a  foreign 
language. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  was  difficult 
for  the  foreigner  to  resist  the  process  of  Amer- 
icanization, even  if  he  wanted  to.  I  have 
myself  seen  this  process  of  Americanization 
going  on  in  a  way  that  is  fairly  typical  of  the 
earlier  period.  My  own  parents  were  de- 
scended on  the  one  side  from  Dutch  and 
German  ancestors  who  came  to  New  York 
probably  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  on 
the  other  side  from  English  and  Irish  an- 
cestors who  came  there — I  have  no  idea  when. 
My  paternal  great-grandfather  could  not 
speak  anything  but  German ;  my  father  could 
not  speak  anything  but  English,  nor  could 
any  one  have  guessed,  either  from  his  ap- 
pearance or  from  any  tone  or  quality  in  his 
speech,  that  he  was  of  other  than  English 
descent.  In  1867,  having  served  three  years 
in  the  Civil  War,  he  decided,  like  thousands 
of  others,  to  abandon  the  state  of  his  birth 
in  order  to  acquire  much  better  land  at  a 
much  lower  price  in  the  new  West.  He  ac- 
cordingly went,  first  to  Illinois,  and  afterward 

239 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

to  Iowa,  where  he  bought  eighty  acres  of  as 
good  farm  land  as  there  is  anywhere  to  be 
found,  for  which  he  paid,  I  think,  about  eight 
dollars  an  acre,  and  to  this  he  afterward  added 
two  other  "eighties."  It  was  on  this  Iowa  farm 
that  I  was  born. 

One  of  my  earliest  recollections  was  the  ap- 
pearance in  our  neighborhood,  it  must  have 
been  about  1878,  of  a  strange  family  that  came 
to  live  in  the  house  across  the  road.  To  me,  a 
"typical"  American  boy,  they  seemed  out- 
landish folk  whom  one  would  naturally  avoid 
as  suspicious  and  yet  wish  to  see  from  some 
safe  point  of  vantage  as  a  curiosity.  The 
reason  for  this  primitive  attitude  of  mind 
toward  the  new-comers  was  that  they  were 
Germans  who  could  barely  speak  a  word  or 
two  of  English;  and  a  "typical"  little  Amer- 
ican boy,  who  was  himself  descended  from 
English,  Irish,  Dutch,  and  German  ancestors, 
and  whose  great-grandfather  could  not  speak 
English,  had  never  in  his  life  seen  nor  heard  of 
a  German,  and  now  learned  for  the  first  time 
this  marvelous  thing — namely,  that  there  were 
people  in  the  world  who  could  not  talk  as  he 
did,  but  spoke  a  kind  of  gibberish  which  it 
was  alleged  they  understood,  although  no  one 
else  did.  The  typical  little  American  boy 
doubted,  like  Doctor  Johnson,  whether  they 
could  really  understand  themselves;  and  he 

240 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

wondered  why  they  had  not  been  taught  to 
speak  like  other  people. 

Naturally  enough,  the  little  American  boy 
had  no  desire  to  learn  this  strange  gibberish, 
nor  would  he  ever  make  the  slightest  effort  to 
learn  it.  Afterward,  when  he  became  the  daily 
companion  of  the  children  of  this  German 
family,  and  sometimes  found  himself  inveigled 
by  them  into  their  house  in  order  to  get  some- 
thing to  eat  "between  meals,"  the  grown-up 
Kate,  of  whom  he  was  much  afraid,  would  per- 
haps make  it  a  condition  of  his  getting  any- 
thing that  he  should  say,  "  Bitte,  ein  stuck 
Brot"  But  the  little  American  boy  would 
never  even  try  to  make  these  strange  sounds; 
not  even  the  great  desire  for  bread  and  mo- 
lasses (which  he  always  got,  anyway,  in  the 
end)  would  bring  him  to  it.  Never,  on  any 
occasion,  would  he  say  even  a  single  word, 
such  as  Brot,  or  Messer,  or  Tish;  for  the  truth 
is  that  the  little  American  boy  could  see  no 
sense  in  these  words,  or  any  good  reason  for 
learning  to  pronounce  them. 

And  indeed,  in  his  own  way,  the  little 
American  boy  was  quite  right.  He  never 
needed  to  speak  German;  and  no  one  in  that 
Iowa  farming  community  ever  needed  to 
speak  German.  To  speak  nothing  but  Ger- 
man was  as  great  a  handicap  as  any  one  could 
well  have;  and  the  German  family  knew  this 

241 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

better  than  anybody.  They  had  to  learn 
English,  and  all  of  them  did,  except  the  moth- 
er. The  father  soon  learned  to  say  all  that 
he  needed  to  say,  in  a  strange,  throaty  fashion 
that  never  lost  its  interest  for  the  little  Amer- 
ican boy,  and  the  children  learned  more  easily 
still  to  speak  English  as  well  as  German,  and 
no  doubt  much  better  in  the  course  of  time. 
They  went  with  the  little  American  boys  and 
girls  to  the  "district  school,"  where  they 
studied  the  same  books  and  played  the  same 
games  and  acquired  the  same  manners  as 
other  boys  and  girls.  Between  this  German 
family  and  other  families  there  was  no  differ- 
ence, except  the  difference  in  origin.  The  man 
paid  for  his  farm,  just  as  my  father  paid  for 
his.  He  ultimately  "retired" — that  is,  he 
rented  his  farm  and  went  to  live  in  town  on 
the  rental  of  his  farm — just  as  my  father  did. 
His  children  married,  either  the  children  of 
other  German-Americans  or  else  native  Amer- 
icans (one  of  them  married  my  cousin),  and 
they  now  have  children  of  their  own  who  go 
to  the  schools,  join  the  Methodist  or  the  Bap- 
tist or  the  Congregational  Church,  will  become 
Democrats  or  Republicans,  as  the  case  may 
be,  and  probably  cannot  in  any  case  speak 
any  language  but  English.  Such  was  the  proc- 
ess of  Americanization  throughout  the  farm- 
ing communities  of  the  great  Middle  West. 

242 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

The  process  has  been  much  the  same  in  the 
small  towns.  Many  years  afterward,  the  little 
American  boy  who  would  not  learn  German 
(much  to  his  subsequent  regret)  came  to  live 
in  another  Middle- Western  state,  in  a  town  or 
small  city  of  some  fifteen  thousand  inhabi- 
tants. This  town,  which  we  may  call  X , 

was  a  typical  Western  community  in  the  center 
of  a  rich  farming  country.  It  was  a  prosperous 
"business"  town  in  a  small  way,  and,  as 
usually  happens,  the  home  of  some  more  pre- 
tentious enterprises.  Most  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  this  town  were  "typical"  Americans, 
and  most  of  the  shops  and  banks  and  industrial 
undertakings  were  owned  and  controlled  by 
them.  In  the  town  of  X—  -  there  were,  how- 
ever, the  usual  small  number  of  German- 
Americans — men  of  German  birth  who  had 
become  naturalized  American  citizens,  and 
among  these  were  two  or  three  families,  inter- 
related by  marriage,  who  had  built  up  a  very 
successful  wholesale  business.  They  were,  if 
not  wealthy  in  the  metropolitan  sense,  at 
least  wealthy  in  the  small-town  sense.  In  a 
business  way,  the  men  were  intimately  asso- 
ciated with  the  "prominent"  and  "solid" 
citizens  of  the  place,  while  in  a  social  way  they 
ranked  without  question  among  the  "best 
people." 

One  of  these  men,  whom  we  may  call  Mr. 
243 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

B ,  I  happened  to  know  better  than  the 

others.  He  was  born  in  Hanover,  as  I  recall, 
of  upper-middle-class  parents,  was  educated 
at  a  German  university,  and  came  to  America 
as  a  young  man,  where  he  married  the  daugh- 
ter of  German-born  American  citizens.  As  a 
matter  of  course,  both  of  them  spoke  English, 

Mrs.  B without  any  trace  of  a  German 

accent,  Mr.  B with  a  delightful  Teutonic 

tang.  Necessarily,  in  fact,  in  this  American 
community,  English  was  the  language  which 
they  customarily  spoke,  but  they  both  spoke 
German  well,  they  had  twice  visited  Mr. 

B 's  parents  in  Germany,  and  they  wished, 

naturally  enough,  that  their  three  children 
might  speak  German  as  well  as  English.  This 
they  thought  would  be  easily  achieved ;  the  chil- 
dren would  learn  German  from  their  parents 
and  English  from  their  playmates.  Mr.  and 

Mrs.  B did  their  best,  but  they  failed. 

They  spoke  German  to  the  children  from  an 
early  age — at  least,  when  they  remembered 
that  this  was  what  they  had  decided  to  do. 
But  the  children  only  listened  in  German; 
they  would  reply  in  English.  The  children 
all  went  to  the  high-school,  and  there  they 
studied  German,  which  they  disliked  as  much 
as  most  American  children  dislike  it,  and  with 
about  the  same  result.  Later  they  went  to 
the  university,  and  there  also  they  studied 

244 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

German,  and  learned  about  as  much  of  it  as 
other  American  boys  and  girls  learn.  And 
the  end  of  it  all  is  that,  in  spite  of  the  best  of 
opportunities  and  the  best  of  intentions,  the 
children  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  B—  -  cannot  readily 
speak  ten  connected  sentences  of  good  Ger- 
man. If  they  should  visit  Hanover  they 
probably  could  not  hold  intelligible  converse 
with  their  grandparents  and  cousins.  They 
are  as  much  Americans  as  if  their  ancestors 
had  come  over  on  the  Mayflower! 

Mr.  B—  -  is  also  an  American,  and  must 
remain  so.  I  do  not  know  what  he  thinks  of 
the  Great  War,  and  it  does  not  greatly  mattei 
—except  to  himself.  He  very  certainly  has 
relatives  who  have  fought  with  the  German 
armies,  very  likely  has  some  who  have  died 
in  battle.  His  sympathies  may  or  may  not 
be  with  the  Fatherland.  The  result  is  the 
same  in  either  case.  His  fortunes  are  inex- 
tricably bound  up  with  this  American  com- 
munity in  which  he  lives.  The  efforts  and 
the  associations  of  thirty  years,  his  business 
career  and  that  of  his  son,  the  welfare  and 
the  happiness  of  his  wife  and  daughters,  tie 
him  for  good  and  for  ill  to  this  place  and 
to  these  people.  Whatever  he  may  think 
in  his  heart,  unless  he  is  an  extraordinary 
person  indeed  he  must  and  he  will  act  so  that 
when  he  goes  down  the  street  a  dozen  friends 

245 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  cronies  will  give  him  the  kindly  smile  and 
the  intimate  "Hello,  Fred!"  which  makes  the 
day  comfortable  and  life  worth  living. 


IV 

In  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  the  immi- 
grant problem,  the  problem  of  Americaniza- 
tion, has  become  a  much  more  difficult  one. 
The  immigrant  is  himself  of  a  different  type ; 
he  comes,  or  is  brought  over,  for  somewhat 
different  purposes,  and  he  finds  himself,  when 
he  gets  here,  in  a  quite  different  situation  from 
that  which  has  just  been  described. 

The  immigration  from  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  has  greatly  diminished  in  recent  years. 
Ireland  has  now  scarcely  more  than  one-half 
the  population  it  had  toward  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century ;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
thanks  to  the  Irish  legislation,  it  is,  or  was 
just  before  the  war,  a  far  more  desirable  place 
to  live  in.  German  migration  has  also  fallen 
off.  The  rapid  development  of  industrial  life 
in  Germany,  together  with  the  extensive  social 
legislation  favorable  to  the  working-class,  re- 
moved many  of  the  conditions  which  formerly 
drove  Germans  to  leave  the  Fatherland,  while 
a  good  many  of  those  who  do  go  to  South 
America  rather  than  to  the  United  States. 

The  place  of  the  Germans  has  been  largely 

246 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

taken  by  the  Scandinavians,  especially  the 
Swedes;  but  the  Swedes,  although  they  have 
in  considerable  numbers  become  farmers  in 
the  Northwest,  have  more  often  taken  entire 
possession  of  certain  districts,  as  in  Minne- 
sota, where  they  are  not  assimilated  by  the 
native  population,  but  form  alien  communities 
preserving  their  language  and  customs. 

The  striking  fact,  however,  is  that  relatively 
few  of  the  present-day  immigrants  become 
farmers.  For  the  most  part  the  best  lands 
have  been  taken.  Iowa  land  which  in  1867 
was  purchased  for  $8  per  acre  is  now  sold, 
some  of  it,  for  $425  per  acre.  The  immigrant 
finds,  therefore,  that  he  must  either  become 
a  renter  on  this  good  land,  paying  nearly  as 
much  per  acre  in  yearly  rent  as  the  land  cost 
fifty  years  ago,  or  else  he  must  go  where  land 
is  cheaper  because  it  is  more  remote  or  of 
poorer  quality.  In  either  case,  and  in  spite 
of  the  high  prices  paid  for  farm  products,  when 
rent  or  interest  is  paid  there  is  often  little  left 
for  the  necessities  of  life,  and  nothing  for  the 
luxuries.  In  addition  to  this,  the  farmers  of 
the  Northwest  find  that  the  price  which  they 
can  get  for  their  wheat  is  somehow  determined 
by  the  great  milling  corporations  of  Minne- 
apolis, while  the  meat-packers  of  Chicago,  St. 
Louis,  and  Kansas  City  manipulate  in  their 
own  interests  the  price  of  hogs  and  cattle. 

17  247 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Inevitably,  therefore,  the  agricultural  com- 
munities no  longer  attract  immigrants  as  they 
once  did.  The  situation  is  vividly  revealed 
in  the  simple  fact  that  whereas  in  1850  the 
average  price  of  farm  land  in  the  United  States 

was  only  $11.33  Per  acre>  and  m  I9°°  was  st*U 
only  $19.30,  in  1910  it  had  risen  to  $39.50, 
having  more  than  doubled  in  ten  years.  These 
facts  find  their  complement  in  the  statistics 
of  immigration  distribution  since  1880.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  the  total  foreign- 
born  population  in  the  North  Central  states 
(the  distinctively  agricultural  states)  steadily 
increased  before  that  date  until  it  numbered 
2,917,000  as  against  2,815,000  for  the  North 
Atlantic  states  (the  distinctively  industrial 
states).  Since  1880  the  great  increase  has 
been  chiefly  in  the  latter  rather  than  in  the 
former  region.  In  1910  the  figures  for  the 
North  Central  states  were  4,690,000,  while 
those  for  the  North  Atlantic  states  were 
6,676,000.  But  this  does  not  tell  the  whole 
story.  After  the  year  1890  the  increase  in 
the  North  Central  states  was  very  slight — 
amounting  to  less  than  a  million  in  the  twenty 
years  from  1890  to  1910.  And  this  slight  in- 
crease was  evidently  largely  in  the  cities.  Dur- 
ing the  decade  from  1890  to  1900  there  was 
actually  a  decrease  of  foreign-born  population 
in  every  one  of  the  North  Central  states  except 

248 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

North  Dakota,  Minnesota,  and  Illinois.  Dur- 
ing the  same  decade,  out  of  a  total  increase  of 
1,092,000  in  the  foreign-born  population,  all 
but  152,000  of  this  increase  was  in  the  six 
states  of  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Massa- 
chusetts, New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  and  Illi- 
nois— that  is  to  say,  the  most  highly  indus- 
trialized states,  with  the  exception  of  Illinois, 
in  the  Union.  The  meaning  of  this  is  clear; 
it  means  that  in  the  twenty  years  before  1910 
the  great  mass  of  the  immigrant  population, 
instead  of  being  widely  distributed  over  large 
areas  and  among  the  agricultural  communities, 
was  concentrated  in  the  great  industrial  cen- 
ters— New  York,  Pittsburg,  the  coal-mining 
regions  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the  manufact- 
uring towns  of  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  and 
Massachusetts. 

A  second  characteristic  of  recent  immigra- 
tion is  that  the  immigrants  who  come  in  such 
large  numbers  to  work  in  the  Bethlehem  steel- 
plant  or  the  New  England  cotton-mills  are 
less  likely  to  be  English-speaking  people,  less 
likely  to  be  German.  In  the  decade  ending 
1880  the  immigration  from  Italy,  Austria- 
Hungary,  Russia,  and  the  Balkans  was  not 
more  than  3  per  cent,  of  the  total;  in  the 
decade  ending  1910  it  was  about  36  per  cent, 
of  the  total.  In  1870  the  number  of  Slavs 
and  Italian  laborers  in  the  anthracite  coal 

249 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

region  of  Pennsylvania  was  306,  while  the 
number  of  English-speaking  laborers  was  105,- 
ooo;  in  1910  the  number  of  Slavs  and  Italians 
was  177,803,  while  the  number  of  English- 
speaking  laborers  was  only  82,000.  In  the  dec- 
ade ending  1910  only  about  28  per  cent,  of 
the  total  immigration  was  of  English-speaking 
stocks,  and  in  the  same  period  the  number  of 
illiterates  had  risen  to  nearly  40  per  cent. 

The  ignorant  peasant  or  laborer  or  vaga- 
bond of  any  country,  particularly  of  south- 
eastern Europe,  may  well  imagine  America 
to  be  the  land  where  life  is  bright  and  wealth 
easily  obtained.  The  ignorant  are  certainly 
those  who  can  be  most  easily  made  to  think 
so  by  those  who  are  interested  in  getting  them 
to  come.  Undoubtedly  the  hopeless  lot  of 
many  people  in  such  countries  as  Russia  and 
Italy,  in  parts  of  Austria-Hungary,  in  Greece 
and  Bulgaria  and  Rumania,  predispose  them, 
at  all  hazards,  to  try  their  fortunes  in  the  New 
World.  But  it  is  also  true  that  much  of  the 
present-day  immigration  is  "induced"  or 
"stimulated"  by  those  who  have  their  own 
interests  to  serve.  This  has  always  been  true 
to  some  extent.  In  the  earlier  period  land 
companies  desiring  to  sell  their  land,  state 
governments  wishing  to  populate  their  empty 
stretches  of  territory,  and  European  govern- 
ments willing  to  rid  their  countries  of  useless 

250 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

or  vicious  classes,  have  all  contributed  to  swell 
the  tide  of  immigration. 

Yet  this  sort  of  activity  was  probably  never 
so  notable,  or  so  bad  in  its  results,  as  now. 
On  this  point  the  United  States  Commissioner- 
General  of  Immigration,  referring  to  the  enor- 
mous increase  of  immigration  from  southern 
and  southeastern  Europe,  has  this  to  say  in 
his  report  for  1910: 

It  is,  to  a  very  large  extent,  induced,  stimulated, 
artificial  immigration;  and  hand  in  hand  with  it  (as 
a  part,  indeed,  of  the  machinations  of  the  promoters, 
steerers,  runners,  sub-agents,  and  usurers,  more  or  less 
directly  connected  with  steamship  lines,  the  great 
beneficiaries  of  immigration)  run  plans  for  the  ex- 
ploitation of  the  ignorant  classes  which  often  place 
upon  our  shores  large  numbers  of  aliens,  who,  if  the 
facts  were  only  known  at  the  time,  are  worse  than 
destitute,  are  burdened  with  obligations  in  which  they 
and  all  their  relatives  are  parties,  debts  secured  with 
mortgages  on  such  small  holdings  as  they  and  their 
relatives  possess,  and  on  which  usurious  interest  must 
be  paid.  Pitiable  indeed  is  their  condition,  and  pitiable 
it  must  remain  unless  good  fortune  accompanies  the 
alien  while  he  is  struggling  to  exist  and  is  denying 
himself  the  necessaries  of  decent  living  in  order  to  clear 
himself  of  the  incubus  of  accumulated  debt. 

These  helpless  people,  encumbered  with 
debt,  ignorant  of  English,  many  of  them  un- 
able to  read  or  write  any  language,  ready  to 
be  herded  into  the  first  job  that  offers,  are 

251 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

precisely  the  human  material  which  many  of 
the  great  manufacturing  establishments  are 
looking  for.  The  competitive  system  of  in- 
dustry forces  employers  to  look  at  labor  'as  a 
commodity  to  be  purchased  as  cheaply  as  pos- 
sible and  to  be  thrown  aside  when  it  is  no 
longer  worth  the  cost.  Outside  of  business 
hours  the  average  American  employer  is  a 
humane  and  generous  man;  but  he  cannot 
afford,  or  thinks  that  he  cannot  afford,  to 
bring  sentiment,  not  even  perhaps  the  senti- 
ment of  humanity,  into  his  business ;  and  he 
has  not  even  the  interest  or  the  pride  of  own- 
ership which  would  induce  the  master  of  a 
slave  gang  to  see  that  his  chattels  were  Veil  fed 
and  comfortable.  His  responsibility  to  the 
laborers  ends  when  he  has  paid  them  the  stipu- 
lated wage,  and  he  somehow  persuades  him- 
self that  while  the  plant  and  the  product  be- 
long to  him,  and  must  accordingly  be  the 
objects  of  his  constant  solicitude,  the  laborer 
does  not  belong  to  him  and  is  therefore  no 
concern  of  his ;  it  is  with  the  labor  only,  and 
with  its  price,  that  he  has  anything  to  do. 
Noblesse  oblige,  that  sentiment  which  so  often 
induces  the  wealthy  American  to  bestow  his 
wealth  upon  public  institutions  devoted  to  the 
welfare  of  humanity,  is  singularly  absent  in  his 
dealings  with  the  actual  men  and  women  who 

contribute  to  the  production  of  that  wealth. 

252 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

The  intelligent  English-speaking  American 
laborer  understands  this;  and  since  the  em- 
ployer considers  that  his  business  is  to  buy 
labor  as  cheaply  as  possible,  the  laborer  con- 
siders that  he  must  sell  his  labor  as  dearly  as 
possible.  The  long  history  of  the  labor-unions 
in  the  United  States  is  the  story  of  how  in- 
telligent labor  has  tried  to  organize  so  that 
the  individual  laborer  may  deal  with  the  in- 
dividual capitalist  on  equal  terms  and  force 
him  to  pay  a  decent  living  wage.  For  many 
kinds  of  skilled  labor  the  labor-union  has  been 
an  effective  means  of  keeping  wages  at  a  rea- 
sonably high  level.  But  the  more  successful 
the  unions  are  the  more  interested  (falsely, 
no  doubt)  the  employers  are  in  obtaining  a 
supply  of  labor  that  is  not  controlled  by  the 
unions.  Nothing  is  therefore  so  well  suited 
to  the  purposes  of  those  great  industries  which 
require  a  great  deal  of  unskilled  labor  as  a 
continuous  influx  of  ignorant,  destitute,  and 
helpless  foreigners.  It  is  this  class  of  immi- 
grants, coming  largely  from  southeastern  Eu- 
rope, that  they  welcome;  and  these  new- 
comers are  steadily  driving  native  American 
labor,  as  well  as  English-speaking  immigrant 
labor,  out  of  one  industry  after  another.  Slavs 
and  Italians  are  replacing  Irish,  Scotch,  Welsh, 
German,  and  English  workers  in  the  anthracite 
coal-mining  industry;  Poles  and  Armenians 

253 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

are  replacing  the  Irish  in  the  making  of  collars 
and  cuffs;  Poles  and  Italians  are  replacing 
the  Irish  and  the  English  in  .the  woolen, 
worsted,  and  cotton  industries;  Russians  and 
Italians  are  replacing  Germans  in  the  manu- 
facture of  men's  and  children's  clothing.  And 
so  it  is  in  many  other  industries. 

The  new-comers  drive  out  the  native  la- 
borers not  only  because  they  are  not  con- 
trolled by  the  labor-unions,  but  because  they 
are  willing  to  live,  or  cannot  in  their  ig- 
norance and  dire  need  refuse  to  live,  in  a 
way  which  the  native  will  not  endure.  Mr. 
Warne,  in  his  book  entitled,  The  Immigrant 
Invasion,  contrasts  the  standard  of  life  of 
the  English-speaking  laborer  in  the  anthra- 
cite coal-mining  region  with  that  of  the 
Slav  and  Italian  laborer.  The  English-speak- 
ing laborers  of  the  period  before  1880,  he 
says — 

wanted  a  home,  with  a  wife  and  children  and  some 
degree  of  comfort.  In  that  home  he  wanted  none  but 
his  own  immediate  family  or  near  relatives.  For  the 
rent  of  a  neat,  two-story  frame  house  with  a  porch 
and  yard  he  usually  paid  about  four  dollars  a  month. 
He  wanted  a  carpet  in  the  best  room,  pictures  on  the 
wall,  and  the  home  to  be  otherwise  attractive  and  com- 
fortable. .  .  .  His  wife  he  liked  to  see  comfortably  and 
fairly  well  dressed.  For  his  children  he  had  ambitions 
which  required  their  attendance  at  the  little  red  school- 
house  on  the  hill.  ...  In  brief,  the  standard  of  living 

254 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

of  the  English-speaking  races  was  a  comparatively 
high  one,  which  needed  for  its  maintenance  a  compara- 
tively high  wage. 

In  striking  contrast  with  all  this  is  the  mode  of 
life  which  the  Slav  and  Italian  brought  with  them 
into  the  region.  .  .  .  They  came  in  batches,  shipped 
by  the  car-load  to  the  coal-fields.  When  they  arrived 
they  seemed  perfectly  aimless.  It  was  hard  for  them 
to  make  themselves  understood.  They  would  land 
at  the  depot,  and  .  .  .  spend  the  first  night  on  the  plat- 
form, or  in  a  stable  on  the  hay.  .  .  .  Many  were  so  poor 
that  they  came  in  old  army  suits,  their  belongings  all 
in  one  big  bundle.  .  .  .  These  Slavs  and  Italians  do  not 
object  to  living  in  a  one-room  hut  built  by  their  own 
hands  on  the  hillside,  of  driftwood  gathered  at  spare 
moments  from  along  the  highway,  and  roofed  with  tin 
from  discarded  powder-cans.  In  not  a  few  of  their 
living-places  the  most  conspicuous  articles  of  furniture 
are  bunks  arranged  in  rows  along  the  side  of  the  wall. 
They  are  not  particular  with  whom  or  how  many  they 
live,  except  that  usually  they  want  them  to  be  of  their 
own  nationality.  .  .  .  Out  of  a  wage  averaging  the  year 
round  about  thirty  dollars  a  month  many  of  the  Slavs 
and  Italians  easily  save  from  fifteen  to  twenty  dollars 
a  month.  The  Slav  with  a  family  cannot  save  so  much, 
but  in  not  a  few  cases  even  with  a  wife  and  children 
his  slightly  higher  cost  of  living  is  met  by  the  wife 
taking  in  "boarders."  The  family  income  is  also  in- 
creased through  the  work  of  the  wife.  .  .  .  She  usually 
goes  about  barefooted  and  bareheaded  even  in  the 
streets.  .  .  .  Besides  all  this,  to  these  workers  children 
are  an  asset  instead  of  a  liability. 

Under  such  conditions  as  these,  in  which 
the  immigrants  are  concentrated  in  little  com- 

255 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

pact  communities  around  great  industrial 
plants  like  the  anthracite  coal-mines  and  the 
Bethlehem  steel-works,  or  in  the  slums  of  our 
great  cities,  the  Americanization  of  the  for- 
eigner becomes  increasingly  difficult.  He  does 
not  learn  the  English  language,  because  he 
does  not  need  to;  he  does  not  associate  with 
Americans,  because  they  do  not  live  in  his 
community;  he  feels  no  high  regard  for  Amer- 
ica because  he  soon  learns  that  it  gives  him 
neither  the  opportunities  nor  the  rewards 
which  Americans  have.  A  great  number  of 
these  people  come  to  America  not  to  become 
Americans,  but  to  save  a  little  of  their  des- 
perately earned  money  in  order  to  return  to 
the  Old  World.  The  children  of  those  who 
do  remain  very  likely  learn  English — after  a 
fashion;  but  they  too  often  learn  English  as 
an  American  in  Germany  learns  German,  not 
as  a  language  which  he  intends  to  make  his 
own,  but  as  an  instrument  which  may  prove 
temporarily  useful.  In  organizing  the  army 
under  the  selective  draft  it  was  found  that  in 
many  of  these  foreign  communities  from  60 
to  80  per  cent,  of  the  draftees  could  not  speak 
English,  and  in  many  companies  it  was  nec- 
essary to  teach  the  men  the  simple  words  and 
phrases  of  the  drill-book  before  undertaking 
to  train  them  in  the  elementary  movements  of 
military  tactics.  They  went  to  war  to  fight 

256 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

for  American  ideals,  often  enough  vaguely 
wondering  what  they  were,  or  sullenly  in- 
quiring what  benefits  they  promised  to  the 
exploited  poor. 

Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  who  is  at  all  events  a  keen 
observer,  has  this  to  say  in  his  book  on  The 
Future  of  America: 

At  present,  if  we  disregard  sentiment,  if  we  deny 
the  alleged  necessity  of  gross  flattery  whenever  one 
writes  of  America  for  Americans,  and  state  the  bare 
facts  of  the  case,  they  amount  to  this:  That  America, 
in  the  urgent  process  of  individualistic  industrial  de- 
velopment, in  the  feverish  haste  to  get  through  with 
the  material  possibilities,  is  importing  a  large  portion 
of  the  peasantry  of  central  and  eastern  Europe,  and 
converting  it  into  a  practically  illiterate  industrial  pro- 
letariat. In  doing  this  it  is  doing  something  that, 
however  different  in  spirit,  differs  from  the  slave  trade 
in  its  earlier  history  only  in  the  narrower  gap  between 
employer  and  laborer.  In  the  "colored"  population 
America  has  already  ten  million  descendants  of  un- 
assimilated  and  perhaps  unassimilable  labor  immi- 
grants. .  .  .  And  I  have  a  foreboding  that  in  the  mixed 
flood  of  workers  that  pours  into  America  by  the  million 
to-day,  in  the  torrent  of  ignorance,  against  which  that 
heroic  being,  the  schoolmarm,  battles  at  present  all 
unaided  by  men,  there  is  to  be  found  the  possibility  of 
another  dreadful  separation  of  class  and  kind,  a  sepa- 
ration perhaps  not  so  profound,  but  far  more  universal. 
One  sees  the  possibility  of  a  rich  industrial  and  mercan- 
tile aristocracy  of  western  European  origin  dominating 
a  dark-haired,  darker-eyed,  uneducated  proletariat 
from  central  and  eastern  Europe. 

257 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

This  is  the  danger  as  Mr.  Wells  sees  it.  There 
is,  no  doubt,  much  exaggeration  in  the  picture, 
if  it  is  to  be  taken  as  a  picture  of  America  as 
a  whole.  Mr.  Wells,  besides  being  given  to 
over-emphasis,  sees  that  part  of  America  which 
travelers  mostly  see — the  Eastern  part  more 
than  the  Western,  the  cities  and  industrial 
centers  more  than  the  rural  and  agricultural 
communities.  But  this  is  just  what  the  im- 
migrant sees  also,  and  the  America  which  the 
immigrant  sees  is  the  whole  of  America  for 
him.  Whatever  we  may  think,  for  the  great 
mass  of  the  foreign-born  population  America 
no  longer  stands,  as  it  once  stood,  for  the 
ideal  of  liberty  and  equality.  When  the  im- 
migrant thinks  of  America  he  thinks  of  New 
York  with  its  palaces  on  Fifth  Avenue  and 
the  massed  squalor  of  its  East  Side  slums; 
or  else  he  thinks  of  the  untold  millions  which 
our  public-spirited  billionaires  have  accumu- 
lated by  the  aid  of  men  working  twelve  hours 
a  day  for  wages  that  would  barely  keep  a 
slave  in  sleek  condition.  When  they  think 
of  America  they  think  of  the  bloated  bourgeois 
Republic;  and  so  their  minds,  seeking  for  the 
everlasting  ideal  of  democracy,  seeking  for 
the  "right  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness,"  turn  to  bolshevism  and  the  class 
war. 

What  Mr.  Wells  sees,  and  what  the  imrni- 
258 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

grant  sees,  is  not  the  whole  of  America.  The 
great  heart  of  America,  its  humanity  and  ideal- 
ism, its  sanity  and  common  sense,  its  attach- 
ment to  the  old  conceptions  of  liberty  and 
equal  opportunity — these  are  to  be  found  still 
(or  will  be,  let  us  hope,  when  the  unreason  of 
the  war  frenzy  shall  have  subsided)  in  the 
great  mass  of  the  people  outside  the  large 
cities,  in  the  quiet  towns  and  villages  and  farm- 
ing communities.  What  Mr.  Wells  and  the 
immigrant  see  is  not  the  whole  of  America. 
We  must  have  faith  to  believe  that  it  is  not 
America  at  all.  But  at  least  it  is  a  tendency 
in  American  life,  and  it  is  a  tendency  which 
must  be  recognized,  and,  being  recognized, 
must  be  combated.  If  this  is  not  so,  then 
America,  in  any  ideal  or  spiritual  sense,  and 
all  she  has  meant  for  the  world,  will  cease 
to  be. 

The  problem  of  immigration  is  but  part  of 
a  larger  problem:  it  is  part  of  the  problem 
created  by  the  disappearance  of  free  land,  by 
the  rapid  industrialization  of  America,  and 
by  the  concentration  of  wealth  and  industrial 
power;  it  is  part  of  the  problem  of  industrial 
democracy — a  problem  which  we,  in  company 
with  the  rest  of  the  world,  have  yet  to  solve. 
That  the  United  States — even  the  fortunate 
United  States — must  meet  this  problem  has 
not  escaped  the  penetrating  eye  of  America's 

259 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

most  competent  as  well  as  ner  most  friendly 
critic.  In  the  latest  edition  of  The  American 
Commonwealth  Lord  Bryce  has  this  to  say: 

There  is  a  part  of  the  Atlantic  where  the  westward- 
speeding  steam-vessel  always  expects  to  encounter  fogs. 
On  the  fourth  or  fifth  day  of  the  voyage  while  still  in 
bright  sunlight,  one  sees  at  a  distance  a  long,  low, 
dark-gray  line  across  the  bows,  and  is  told  that  this  is 
the  first  of  the  fog-banks  which  have  to  be  traversed. 
Presently  the  vessel  is  upon  the  cloud,  and  rushes  into 
its  chilling  embrace,  not  knowing  what  perils  of  ice- 
bergs may  be  shrouded  within  its  encompassing  gloom. 

So  America,  in  her  swift  onward  progress,  sees, 
looming  on  the  horizon  and  now  no  longer  distant,  a 
time  of  mists  and  shadows,  wherein  dangers  may  be 
concealed  whose  form  and  magnitude  she  can  scarcely 
yet  conjecture.  As  she  fills  up  her  Western  regions  with 
inhabitants,  she  sees  the  time  approach  when  all  the 
best  land  .  .  .  will  have  been  occupied,  and  when  the 
land  now  under  cultivation  will  have  been  so  far  ex- 
hausted as  to  yield  scantier  crops  even  to  more  ex- 
pensive culture.  Although  transportation  may  also 
have  become  cheaper,  the  price  of  food  will  rise;  farms 
will  be  less  easily  obtained  and  will  need  more  capital 
to  work  them  with  profit;  the  struggle  for  existence 
will  become  more  severe.  And  while  the  outlet  which 
the  West  now  provides  for  the  overflow  of  the  great 
cities  will  have  become  less  available,  the  cities  will 
have  grown  immensely  more  populous;  pauperism  .  .  . 
may  be  more  widely  spread;  and  even  if  wages  do  not 
sink  work  may  be  less  abundant.  In  fact,  the  chronic 
evils  and  problems  of  old  societies  and  crowded  coun- 
tries, such  as  we  see  them  to-day  in  Europe,  will  have 
reappeared  in  this  new  soil,  while  the  demand  of  the 

260 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

multitude  to  have  a  larger  share  in  the  nation's  collec- 
tive wealth  may  well  have  grown  more  insistent. 

High  economic  authorities  pronounce  that  the  be- 
ginnings of  this  time  of  pressure  lie  not  more  than 
twenty  years  ahead.  ...  It  may  be  the  time  of  trial  for 
democratic  institutions. 

One  may  well  contrast  or  compare  this 
picture  of  the  future  of  America,  drawn  by 
one  of  the  most  intelligent  and  one  of  the 
sanest  minds  of  our  age,  as  well  as  one  of  the 
best  informed  in  all  matters  respecting  Amer- 
ica, with  the  picture  drawn  by  Mr.  Wells. 
The  words  are  different,  but  the  picture,  al- 
though less  highly  colored,  is  much  the  same. 
Into  this  time  of  pressure  described  by  Mr. 
Bryce,  the  pressure  created  in  every  country 
which  undergoes  the  industrial  revolution,  the 
United  States  is  already  passing.  What  dan- 
gers will  we  encounter?  With  what  prepara- 
tion, in  intelligence  and  knowledge,  in  high 
courage  and  in  civic  virtue,  will  we  meet 
them? 


IX 

DEMOCRACY   AND    EDUCATION 


WHEN  we  say,  with  easy  confidence,  that 
the  rapidity  with  which  the  immigrants 
are  Americanized  is  due  to  our  "institutions," 
we  have  in  mind,  among  other  things,  the 
public  schools.  If  it  is  pointed  out  that  in 
many  places  the  process  of  Americanization  is 
slow  and  incomplete,  or  that  it  does  not  go  on 
at  all,  we  are  likely  to  say,  "The  remedy  for 
this  is  education/'  In  America,  while  we  have 
not  too  much  respect  for  the  educated,  we 
have  unlimited  faith  in  education.  What- 
ever ills  democracy  may  be  suffering  from,  the 
reply  is  always  forthcoming,  "The  remedy  for 
that  is  more  and  better  education." 

This  attitude  of  mind  is  at  bottom  a  sound 
one,  in  so  far  as  it  leads  to  a  serious  and  in- 
telligent interest  in  the  schools — and  it  is  not 
by  any  means  confined  to  America.  Wher- 
ever democracy  exists,  or  wherever  intelligent 

262 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

people  desire  to  have  it  exist,  there  the  de- 
sirability of  free  education  for  the  masses  is 
likely  to  be  insisted  upon.  The  ruling  class 
must  be  educated  in  some  fashion;  it  may  be 
badly  educated,  but  at  least  it  must  have  the 
sort  of  education  that  is  suited  to  the  kind  of 
government  that  is  in  its  keeping.  If  the  ideal 
of  government  is  an  absolute  monarchy,  or  a 
landowning  aristocracy,  or  an  ecclesiastical 
priesthood,  or  a  combination  of  all  three,  then 
no  doubt  education  should  be  confined  to 
these  classes.  But  if  the  idea  that  the  people 
are  to  rule  is  frankly  accepted,  then  it  is  ob- 
vious that  the  people  should  be  as  intelligent 
and  well  informed  as  possible;  from  which  it 
follows  that  the  state  should  provide  free  edu- 
cation for  all  its  citizens. 

This,  at  all  events,  is  the  theory  which  has 
accompanied  the  spread  of  democracy  in  Eu- 
rope. Whereas  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  early 
modern  period  education  was  largely  confined 
to  the  clergy,  in  the  later  modern  period,  and 
in  proportion  as  the  ideal  of  democracy  has 
made  headway,  the  State  has  replaced  the 
Church  in  the  control  of  education,  and  free 
public  schools  for  the  people  have  been  widely 
established.  Which  was  cause  and  which  was 
effect  in  this  process  cannot  be  inquired  into 
here;  but,  generally  speaking,  it  is  true  that 
the  ideal  of  popular  education  under  the  con- 
is  263 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

trol  of  the  state  is  as  commonly  accepted  now 
as  the  ideal  of  education  controlled  by  and 
limited  to  the  clergy  was  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
In  this  respect,  as  in  respect  to  the  idea  of 
free  government  itself,  the  United  States  was 
in  some  measure  a  pioneer,  and  it  has  been 
in  some  measure  an  example  to  European 
countries.  The  quality  and  the  smooth  work- 
ing of  democracy  in  America  have  been  com- 
monly associated  with  the  low  percentage  of 
illiteracy  and  the  general  diffusion  of  an  ele- 
mentary education  among  the  people;  and  this 
happy  situation,  it  has  been  assumed,  is  due 
to  the  existence  everywhere,  even  in  remote 
country  districts,  of  the  free  public  school. 
The  United  States  has  in  fact  been  held  up 
as  a  shining  example  of  what  a  true  democracy 
does  in  the  way  of  educating  its  citizens,  and 
of  what  an  educated  citizenship  can  do  in 
the  way  of  making  democracy  a  success. 

II 

Serious  concern  for  education  was  one  of 
the  chief  characteristics  of  the  Puritans  who 
settled  New  England  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. The  type  of  education  which  they 
wished  to  promote  was  indeed  of  a  limited 
and  very  carefully  guarded  sort.  Like  all 
men  who  have  a  conscious  and  reasoned  theory 

264 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

of  the  ideal  commonwealth,  they  wanted  for 
their  people  an  education  which,  by  confirming 
the  theory,  would  constitute  a  bulwark  for  the 
support  and  the  preservation  of  the  common- 
wealth; and  as  the  Puritan  Commonwealth 
was  founded  upon  a  definite  theological  creed 
and  very  precise  notions  of  conduct,  the 
schools  which  they  established  were  devoted 
mainly  to  inculcating  the  accepted  ideas  of 
religion,  politics,  and  morality.  But  at  all 
events  the  Puritan  desired  that  all  children 
should  learn  to  read  and  write,  if  only  that  they 
might  read  the  Bible  and  copy  its  verses; 
and  the  novel  and  important  aspect  of  his 
interest  in  education  was  that  in  order  to 
accomplish  these  ends  he  adopted  the  practice 
of  establishing  schools  in  every  community 
at  the  public  expense. 

In  a  community  where  the  Church  was  a 
part  of  the  State,  the  training  of  the  clergy 
was  obviously  a  matter  of  primary  importance. 
Hence  the  Puritans  had  scarcely  landed  in 
Massachusetts  Bay  before  they  took  steps 
to  found  a  college  for  that  purpose,  and  six 
years  later  Harvard  College  was  in  fact  estab- 
lished. The  existence  of  a  college  called  for 
secondary  schools.  One  of  the  earliest  of 
these,  and  the  first  school  in  America  to  be 
supported  by  public  taxation,  was  founded 
at  Dorchester  in  1639.  It  was  ordered  by  the 

265 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

town  that  twenty  pounds  be  raised  and  "paid 
to  such  schoolmaster  as  shall  undertake  to 
teach  English,  Latin,  and  other  tongues,  also 
writing.  The  said  schoolmaster  to  be  chosen 
from  time  to  time  by  the  freemen."  Within 
the  first  twenty  years  of  Massachusetts  his- 
tory six  grammar-schools  had  been  founded 
in  that  colony. 

But  the  founders  of  Massachusetts  were 
not  indifferent  to  primary-schools.  Their 
ideal  in  this  respect  (it  was  not  found  possible 
to  realize  it  fully)  is  clearly  stated  in  the 
famous  order  of  the  General  Court,  issued  in 
1647,  which  laid  the  foundation  of  the  com- 
mon school  system  in  the  province,  and  has 
been  called  the  "mother  of  all  our  school  laws/' 


It  being  one  of  the  chief  projects  of  that  old  deluder 
Satan  to  keep  men  from  the  knowledge  of  the  Script- 
ures, as  in  former  times  by  keeping  them  in  an  unknown 
tongue,  so  in  these  latter  times  by  persuading  from  the 
use  of  tongues,  .  .  . 

It  is  therefore  resolved,  That  every  Township  in  this 
jurisdiction,  after  the  Lord  hath  increased  them  to  the 
number  of  fifty  householders,  shall  then  forthwith  ap- 
point one  within  their  Town  to  teach  such  children  as 
shall  resort  to  him  to  write  and  read,  whose  wages  shall 
be  paid  either  by  the  parents  or  masters  of  such  chil- 
dren, or  by  the  inhabitants  in  general  ...  as  the  major 
part  .  .  .  shall  appoint.  .  .  . 

It  is  further  ordered,  That  when  any  Town  shall  in- 
crease to  the  number  of  one  hundred  householders, 

266 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

they  shall  set  up  a  grammar  school,  the  master  thereof 
being  able  to  instruct  youth,  so  far  as  they  may  be 
fitted,  for  the  university:  Provided,  that  if  any  Town 
neglect  the  performance  hereof  above  one  year,  that 
every  such  Town  shall  pay  five  pounds  to  the  next 
school  until  they  shall  perform  this  order. 

The  Massachusetts  school  system,  as  actu- 
ally established  and  as  projected  in  this  law, 
is  in  all  essential  respects  the  model  upon 
which  the  school  system  of  the  United  States 
has  been  fashioned.  These  essential  points 
are,  first,  a  free  primary-school  in  every  local 
community  to  teach  the  rudiments  of  knowl- 
edge to  all  children  who  may  attend ;  second, 
a  grammar-school  (that  is  to  say,  a  secondary, 
or,  as  we  say,  a  "high"  school)  in  every  com- 
munity to  teach  the  elements  of  general  cult- 
ure and  to  fit  youths  for  the  university;  and 
finally  a  college  or  university  to  train  men  for 
the  professions  or  to  give  them  a  "liberal 
education."  The  Massachusetts  law  did  not 
require  either  the  primary  or  the  secondary 
schools  to  be  supported  by  public  taxation, 
nor  did  it  require  the  secondary  schools  to 
be  "free"  schools.  But  in  practice,  both  in 
New  England  and  later  throughout  the  United 
States,  both  primary  and  secondary  schools 
have  come  to  be  free  and  publicly  supported. 
Harvard  University  has  remained  a  privately 
endowed  institution,  and  it  still  requires  of 

267 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

its  pupils  the  payment  of  high  fees.  In  the 
East  most  universities,  among  them  some  of 
the  best  in  the  country,  have  followed  Harvard 
in  this  respect ;  but  in  the  region  west  of  the 
Alleghanies  the  universities  are  commonly 
"state  universities" — that  is,  they  are  inte- 
gral parts  of  the  system  of  free  public  schools, 
being  supported  by  taxation  and  controlled 
by  public  authority. 

The  establishment  of  free  schools  was  made 
an  easy  thing  in  America,  as  many  things 
have  been  made  easy,  by  the  existence  of  an 
abundance  of  public  land.  From  an  early 
date  the  New  England  colonies  took  advan- 
tage of  this  fact  by  reserving,  in  the  town 
grants,  a  certain  part  of  the  land  as  an  endow- 
ment for  schools.  The  example  of  New  Eng- 
land became  at  a  later  date  the  settled  prac- 
tice in  all  the  newer  parts  of  the  United 
States.  In  the  Northwest  Ordinance,  passed 
by  Congress  in  1787  for  the  government  of  the 
territory  north  of  the  Ohio  River,  there  was 
included  the  following  clause:  "Religion,  mo- 
rality, and  knowledge  being  necessary  to  good 
government  and  the  happiness  of  mankind, 
schools  and  the  means  of  education  shall  for- 
ever be  encouraged."  The  clause  was  not 
mandatory,  but  it  has  proved  something  more 
than  a  mere  pious  hope.  In  all  the  states 
formed  out  of  the  public  domain  the  common 

268 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

practice  has  been  to  make  extensive  reserva- 
tions of  lands  as  an  endowment  for  public 
education.  Such  lands  have  indeed  too  often 
been  badly  administered,  and  in  some  cases 
largely  diverted  from  their  original  purpose  by 
political  jobbery;  but  the  existence  of  free 
schools  in  all  the  newer  states,  from  the 
little  "district"  schools  in  every  township,  up 
through  the  graded  grammar  and  high-schools 
in  every  county  or  urban  community,  to  the 
state  university,  is  due  in  no  small  measure 
to  this  practice  of  reserving  public  lands  as 
an  educational  endowment. 

That  such  reservations  were  so  generally 
and  so  generously  made  for  this  purpose 
meant,  of  course,  that  the  people  who  settled 
the  West  were  themselves  seriously  interested 
in  education.  Few  pioneer  settlements,  even 
the  most  primitive,  were  long  without  schools. 
The  little  log  school-house  was  often  the  first 
public  building  erected,  frequently  serving  the 
double  purpose  of  religious  worship  and  secu- 
lar instruction;  and,  as  the  community  grew, 
additional  school-houses  were  built.  The  es- 
tablishment of  schools,  in  fact,  kept  pace  with 
the  progress  of  settlement,  and  by  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century  free  elementary 
education,  supported  by  public  taxation,  had 
been  established  in  practically  every  part  of 
the  country. 

269 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

When  the  pioneer  used  the  word  "educa- 
tion/' he  did  not,  of  course,  mean  quite  what 
the  college  professor  means  by  it.  The  pioneer 
wanted  his  children  to  be  "educated"  in  the 
sense  that  he  wanted  them  not  to  be  illiterate 
— he  wanted  them  to  be  able  to  read,  write, 
and  "do  arithmetic."  He  wanted  them  to  be 
able  to  do  these  things  even  if  he  could  not 
do  them  himself;  in  fact,  if  he  could  not  read 
and  write  himself,  he  was  likely  to  want  par- 
ticularly that  his  children  should  be  able  to 
read  and  write.  The  underlying  motive  which 
has  given  the  people  of  the  United  States  so 
keen  an  interest  in  "education"  is  indeed  an 
essential  part  of  their  democratic  habit  of 
mind.  No  man  takes  it  as  a  matter  of  course 
that  his  status  is  fixed,  or  that  his  children 
must  necessarily  be  what  he  has  been.  It  is 
rather  a  matter  of  course  that  a  man's  children 
may  do  something  more  and  achieve  some- 
thing better  than  he  has  found  possible.  All 
that  they  need  is  a  "better  chance"  than  he 
has  had;  and  it  is,  above  all,  "education"  that 
will  give  them  this  better  chance. 

Nowhere  has  this  feeling  been  more  common 
or  more  intense  than  in  the  newer  Western 
parts  of  the  country,  where  the  development 
of  the  community  has  been  so  rapid,  where 
class  divisions  have  been  relatively  non-exist- 
ent, and  where  lack  of  training  has  been  the 

270 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

chief  bar  to  individual  advancement.  In  the 
frontier  communities,  therefore,  the  devotion 
to  education  was  wide-spread,  intense,  and 
extremely  practical  in  its  object.  Every  one 
wanted  the  boys  and  girls  to  have  a  "better 
chance."  All  boys  and  girls  must,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  learn  to  read,  to  write,  and  to  do 
sums.  But  in  any  community,  as  soon  as  that 
came  to  be  a  common  achievement,  so  that 
to  be  illiterate  was  almost  a  disgrace,  to  be 
able  to  read  and  write  and  "do  arithmetic" 
was  not  enough.  If  a  boy  was  to  have  his 
"better  chance"  he  must  go  to  a  "higher" 
school  where  he  could  learn  to  do  arithmetic 
better  than  his  father,  and  study  algebra  and 
grammar,  which  his  father  perhaps  never 
studied,  or  perhaps  learn  a  language,  or  read 
books  which  his  father  never  heard  of.  To  the 
father  who  never  went  to  a  "high-school"  this 
was  very  wonderful — this  was  to  "have  a 
chance."  But  to  the  boy  himself  the  high- 
school  became  in  turn  a  matter  of  course;  and 
for  his  boy,  who  must  also  have  his  better 
chance,  nothing  would  serve  but  a  college — 
the  boy  must  go  to  a  university  and  become  a 
"real  scholar,"  so  that  he  would  have  every 
opportunity  that  any  man  could  have. 

To  the  people  of  the  United  States,  and  par- 
ticularly to  the  people  of  the  newer  regions  of 

the  Middle  and  Far  West,  where  indeed  the 

271 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

American  system  of  public  schools  has  re- 
ceived its  most  characteristic  form,  education 
has  essentially  always  meant  just  this:  That 
the  boy,  and  the  girl,  too,  must,  if  possible, 
learn  something  which  their  parents  never 
knew  in  order  that  they  might  have  a  better 
chance  to  rise  in  the  world  than  their  parents 
had.  It  is  this  attitude  of  mind  that  largely 
explains  the  otherwise  astonishing  fact  that 
the  people  of  these  Western  states,  the  great 
majority  of  them  relatively  poor  and  unedu- 
cated, have  been  willing  to  pay  taxes  for  the 
support  of  high-schools  and  universities.  The 
number  of  boys  and  girls  who  ever  go  to  the 
university,  or  even  to  the  high-school,  is  very 
small  in  comparison  with  the  total  population. 
One  might  suppose  that  the  average  man 

1  would  regard  these  higher  schools  as  "aristo- 
cratic" institutions  and  be  inclined  to  think 
that  they  should  be  supported  by  the  people 
whose  children  took  advantage  of  them.  But 
the  fact  is  that  no  one  could  be  sure  who  was 
an  "average  man";  no  one  could  be  sure  that 
his  children  would  not  be  among  the  favored 
few;  every  man  could  at  least  have  a  reason- 
able hope  that  his  children  would  graduate 
from  the  high-school  at  least,  and  perhaps 
(who  could  tell  ?)  even  from  the  university. 

It  is  this  reasonable  hope  that  made  people 
willing  to  support  free  higher  as  well  as  free 

272 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

primary  education.  It  is  this  reasonable  hope 
that  finds  succinct  expression  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  state  of  Indiana,  which  was  drafted 
in  1819,  and  which  may  be  taken  as  represent- 
ing the  common  practice: 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  General  Assembly,  as 
soon  as  circumstances  will  permit,  to  provide  by  law 
for  a  general  system  of  education  ascending  in  regular 
graduation  from  township  schools  to  state  university, 
wherein  tuition  shall  be  gratis,  and  equally  open  to  all. 

In  this  spirit  the  Western  States  established 
their  public  schools.  And  to-day  it  is  a  rare 
country  district  which  has  not  its  little  school- 
house  at  the  crossroads  within  easy  walking- 
distance  of  every  home;  a  rare  town  which 
has  not  its  graded  grammar-  and  high-school ; 
a  rare  state  which  has  not  within  its  borders 
at  least  one  university  and  one  or  more  col- 
leges and  academies;  and  almost  all  of  the 
lower  schools,  as  well  as  a  great  number  of  the 
universities,  are  free  schools,  are  maintained 
by  public  taxation  and  controlled  by  the 
public  authority. 

The  public-school  system  of  the  United 
States  is  rightly  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
characteristic,  as  one  of  the  essential  parts  of 
American  democratic  institutions.  What  kind 
of  education  do  these  schools  furnish?  How 
do  they  serve  the  purposes  of  democracy? 

273 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

in 

The  purpose  of  the  public-school  system  is, 
after  all,  social  rather  than  strictly  intellectual. 
It  is  only  in  the  college  or  the  university,  and 
sometimes  not  even  in  them,  that  a  pupil 
can  become  "educated"  in  the  academic  sense. 
Only  an  insignificant  part  of  the  people  ever 
see  the  inside  of  a  college.  In  after-life  it  is 
difficult  to  distinguish  the  high-school  gradu- 
ate from  one  who  never  got  beyond  the  gram- 
mar grade,  or  a  university  graduate  from  one 
who  never  got  beyond  the  high-school.  The 
public  schools  are  in  fact  a  socialistic  enter- 
prise on  a  grand  scale;  and  the  employment  of 
some  six  hundred  thousand  teachers,  and  the 
expenditure  of  over  half  a  billion  dollars  of 
public  money  annually  in  such  an  enterprise, 
can  be  justified  only  if  the  result  is  an  ad- 
vantage to  the  community  as  a  whole  rather 
than  primarily  to  the  individual  concerned. 
In  theory  there  is  perhaps  no  necessary  op- 
position between  the  advantage  of  the  in- 
dividual and  that  of  the  community.  But 
there  may  be  in  practice;  and  since  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  schools  to  the  community 
can  come  only  through  the  individuals  who 
pass  through  them,  it  is  and  must  remain  a 
fundamental  assumption  that  the  chief  pur- 
pose of  free  education  in  a  democratic  soci- 

274 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ety  is  to  make  good  citizens  rather  tharf  good 
scholars. 

This  primary  purpose  was  long  ago  expressed, 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  by  the  Puritans 
of  New  Haven,  who  founded  schools  "for  the 
better  training  up  of  youth  in  this  town,  that 
through  God's  blessing  they  may  be  fitted  for 
public  service  hereafter,  either  in  church  or 
commonwealth/'  When,  at  a  later  time,  the 
Church  was  no  longer  thought  to  be  a  neces- 
sary part  of  the  State,  the  term  "Church"  was 
left  out  of  this  formula;  but  with  that  slight 
change  the  Puritan  formula  fitted  nicely 
enough  into  the  democratic  political  philoso- 
phy to  which  America  has  always  held.  That 
philosophy  was  formulated  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  the  idea  of  free  schools,  sup- 
ported and  controlled  by  the  state,  was  an 
essential  part  of  it. 

Eighteenth-century  political  philosophy  was 
fashioned  mainly  in  France  at  a  time  when  the 
progressive  minds  of  the  age  found  the  welfare 
of  men  hampered  by  arbitrary  government  and 
by  the  outworn  and  senseless  privileges  en- 
joyed by  nobles  and  clergy  and  monopolistic 
industrial  corporations.  They  reasoned,  there- 
fore, that  the  wretched  state  of  the  great  mass 
of  the  people  was  due,  not  to  native  viciousness, 
but  to  bad  laws  and  customs.  If  you  would 
make  men  better,  more  prosperous,  and  more 

275 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

happy,  they  said,  you  must  first  of  all  give 
them  freedom;  you  must  abolish  arbitrary 
government  and  class  privilege  and,  by  con- 
ferring political  and  personal  and  industrial 
liberty,  give  every  man  a  chance  to  make  the 
most  of  himself.  But  this  was  not  all.  There 
would  still  remain  certain  inequalities.  One 
man  would  be  born  intelligent,  another  stupid ; 
one  would  have  an  excellent  home-training, 
another  would  lack  this  training.  These  in- 
equalities, arising  from  difference  in  capacity 
and  from  advantages  of  birth,  it  was  the 
business  of  the  state  to  remove  as  far  as 
possible.  According  to  eighteenth-century 
political  philosophy,  it  was,  therefore,  the 
duty  of  the  state  to  establish  a  system  of 
free  elementary  schools,  through  which  all 
citizens  would  pass,  and  which  would  mold 
them  all  to  some  degree  of  equality.  Ajmir 
form  education,  it  was  hoped,  would  in  time 
give  fcTall  citizens  that  common  capacity 
and  that  similarity  in  civic  virtue  which 
would  be  the  sure  foundation  of  genuine  de- 
mocracy and  of  steady  progress  toward  human 
perfectibility. 

The  generous  expectations  of  eighteenth- 
century  philosophers  have  not  been  fully  real- 
ized. Neither  free  government  nor  free  public 
schools  which  have  come  with  free  govern- 
ment have  brought  about  the  reign  of  felicity 

276 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

or  the  regeneration  of  the  human  race.  But 
the  modern  faith  in  public  education,  so  far 
as  that  faith  still  persists,  rests  upon  the  same 
general  philosophy;  and  it  is  in  the  United 
States,  where  the  philosophy  was  never  so 
consciously  elaborated  as  in  France,  that  it 
has  been  most  effectively  confirmed  in  prac- 
tice. Not  in  any  ideal  way,  but  in  a  prac- 
tically effective  way,  the  public  schools  in  the 
United  States  do  make  for  equality;  they  do 
in  some  measure  enable  men  to  enter  upon  the 
economic  struggle  for  existence  on  more  equal 
terms ;  they  do  in  some  measure  tend  to  shape 
the  mind  and  manners  of  men  to  a  common 
social  type;  they  do,  most  of  all,  bridge  the 
gap  between  rich  and  poor,  the  well  dressed 
and  the  shabby,  the  soft  mannered  and  the 
brutal,  by  throwing  them  together  at  an  im- 
pressionable age  and  forcing  them  to  compete 
or  co-operate  in  common  tasks  and  common 
activities. 

The  most  characteristic  and  the  most  im- 
portant part  of  the  public-school  system  is 
that  which  is  comprised  in  the  primary  and 
grammar  grades.  These  are  the  people's 
schools  in  the  strict  sense;  for  throughout  the 
country  these  are  almost  the  only  elementary 
schools,  and  to  these  schools  practically  all  the 
children  go.  In  any  typical  community  there 
is  every  reason  for  parents  sending  their  chil- 

277 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

dren  to  the  public  schools,  and,  except  perhaps 
in  the  case  of  strict  Catholics,  none  for  refusing 
or  neglecting  to  do  so.  It  costs  them  nothing 
—in  some  places  even  the  text-books,  paper, 
pencils,  pens,  and  ink  are  furnished  gratis. 
The  hard-worked  mother  of  a  family  often 
finds  other  than  educational  advantages  in 
turning  over  her  children  to  the  safe  guardian- 
ship of  the  schoolmistress  from  nine  to  four 
o'clock  five  days  in  the  week.  Besides,  it  is 
taken  as  a  matter  of  course  that  a  child  shall 
"go  to  school"  from  the  age  of  five,  at  least, 
until  the  age  of  twelve  or  fourteen.  In  any 
small  community  a  family  that  does  not  send 
Jane  and  Tom  to  school  is  a  marked  family — 
the  neighbors  wish  to  know  the  reason,  and 
if  none  is  forthcoming  they  pity  the  children 
as  unfortunates  and  condemn  the  parents  as 
culpable. 

To  these  schools,  then,  all  the  children  of  a 
community  come,  and  there  they  learn — in  a 
routine  way,  indeed — the  essentials.  They 
learn  to  add  and  subtract  and  divide,  and  to 
do  fractions  and  compute  interest.  There 
they  learn  a  little  about  the  geography  of  the 
world,  they  learn  to  name  the  states  of  the 
Union,  their  capitals,  chief  towns  and  rivers, 
and  their  leading  industries.  They  learn  a  little 
English  grammar,  are  corrected  when  they 

say  "I  seen"  or  "he  has  went"  (although  very 

278 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

rarely  when  they  say  "he  don't"),  and  make 
some  progress  in  writing,  and  in  the  mastery 
of  the  intricacies  of  English  spelling.  There 
they  learn  the  elements  of  American  history, 
and  of  the  form  and  working  of  local  and 
national  government.  They  learn  all  this, 
and  this  is  much  for  all  the  people  to  learn. 
It  means  that  in  any  average  town  or  country 
community  it  is  a  rare  thing  to  meet  any 
person  who  cannot  sign  his  name  to  a  sub- 
scription, or  write  a  letter  to  a  friend,  read  a 
newspaper,  or  a  book  out  of  the  circulating 
library.  It  means  that  the  great  majority 
of  the  people  know  something  about  the  coun- 
tries of  the  world,  and  more  about  their  own 
country,  about  its  history,  about  its  govern- 
ment, about  its  public  men  and  political  par- 
ties and  the  issues  that  divide  them.  For  all 
the  people  to  learn  this  means  that  all  have 
that  rudimentary  knowledge  which  makes  the 
effort  to  earn  a  living  much  easier  than  it 
would  otherwise  be,  and  that  intelligent  in- 
terest in  general  affairs  without  which  demo- 
cratic government  would  be  impossible  except 
in  name. 

It  is  important  that  all  the  people  learn 
these  things ;  it  is  quite  as  important  that  they 
learn  them  together  and  in  the  same  way; 
for  in  learning  them  together  and  in  the  same 
way  they  learn  a  good  many  other  things 

19  279 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

besides.  The  children  of  the  poor  and  the 
rich,  the  cultured  and  the  ignorant,  the  good 
and  the  bad,  assemble  in  the  same  room  and 
study  the  same  books  and  recite  the  same 
lessons.  Johnny,  the  banker's  son,  sits  in  the 
seat  next  to  Jake,  the  butcher's  boy,  or  Gertie, 
the  washerwoman's  daughter.  In  the  free- 
masonry of  youth  they  give  each  other  the 
wink,  or  whisper  out  of  hours,  or  exchange 
needed  crayons  or  paper  pads.  There  is,  gen- 
erally speaking,  one  rule  for  all,  and  Johnny 
is  reprimanded  for  whispering,  or  Jake  is  com- 
mended for  good  behavior,  without  discrimi- 
nation; or  if  by  chance  there  seems  any  dis- 
crimination, "teacher"  falls  under  the  severe 
censure  of  all  her  pupils.  The  school-room  is 
a  juvenile  democracy  with  a  marked  public 
opinion  of  its  own  which  insists  above  all 
things  upon  impartial  justice,  silently  with- 
draws its  "mandate"  from  the  instructor  who 
has  favorites,  and  ostracizes  any  pupil  so  lost 
to  a  sense  of  the  social  welfare  as  to  become 
"teacher's  pet." 

The  playground  is  even  more  democratic 
than  the  class-room.  There  is,  in  connection 
with  the  American  public  school,  an  important 
institution  known  as  "recess" — an  intermis- 
sion of  fifteen  minutes  in  the  middle  of  the 
morning  and  another  in  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon  session.  During  recess  the  children, 

280 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in  pleasant  weather,  march  out  of  the  building, 
and  when  the  ranks  are  broken  pandemonium 
is  let  loose.  For  a  moment  the  struggling  mass 
of  humanity  is  a  howling  mob ;  but  it  is  a  mob 
which,  in  true  American  fashion,  quickly  ar- 
ranges itself  in  groups  according  to  the  in- 
terests or  likings  of  the  individuals  composing 
it.  Games  of  all  sorts  are  immediately  in 
course ;  and  ordinarily,  so  far  as  boys  are  con- 
cerned, the  worth  of  any  boy  and  his  standing 
among  his  fellows  is  largely  determined  by 
his  ability  to  organize  attractive  games  and 
his  skill  in  playing  them.  Baseball  is  the 
American  national  game,  and  it  is  the  public- 
school  playground  that  chiefly  makes  it  so. 
It  is  the  principal  school  sport.  School-boys 
all  know,  and  nearly  all  play,  baseball;  they 
take  it  with  intense  seriousness,  and  it  fur- 
nishes an  admirable  test  of  strength  and  en- 
durance, or  accuracy,  or  sure  judgment,  and 
of  self-restraint.  But  it  does  more  than  this. 
On  the  baseball-field  of  the  public  schools  all 
the  boys  of  a  community,  of  high  or  low  de- 
gree, good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  submit  them- 
selves voluntarily  to  a  single  test — the  test 
of  merit  in  playing  the  game.  And  when  a 
"team"  is  organized  to  compete  with  a  neigh- 
boring school,  by  common  consent  the  best 
players  are  chosen.  Nothing  else  counts.  It 
might  be  a  choice  between  the  son  of  the 

281 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

President  of  the  United  States  and  a  boot- 
black; only  one  question  would  be  asked— 
which  can  play  the  better?    And  the  better 
player  would  be  chosen.    The  chances  are  that 
it  would  be  the  bootblack. 

This  is,  on  the  whole,  the  spirit  which  ani- 
mates the  boys  in  respect  to  their  life  in  the 
public  schools.  They  form  an  essentially 
democratic  community  in  which  all  have  to 
submit  to  the  same  standards  of  judgment. 
The  judgment  is  essentially  direct  and  fair- 
minded,  except  perhaps  in  respect  to  the  odd 
or  unusual  boy  who  happens  also  to  be  an 
incorrigibly  unsocial  boy.  It  is  something  of 
an  ordeal  for  a  new  boy — a  country  boy,  for 
example,  entering  a  city  school — to  be  sub- 
jected to  the  severe  scrutiny  and  the  rough- 
and-ready  tests  which  he  cannot  escape.  For 
the  attitude  of  the  school-boy  is  not  cosmo-^ 
politan;  the  outsider  is  a  foreigner  and  an 
enemy,  and  until  he  is  initiated  and  proves 
himself  one  of  them  his  life  is  made  a  burden. 
School-boys  are  democratic  only  within  the 
tested  group.  Toward  outsiders  they  are, 
although  very  human,  scarcely  humane  or 
engaging.  The  new  boy  is  at  once  the  ob- 
served of  all  observers ;  the  center  of  frank  and 
impertinent  and  brutal  curiosity  and  criticism; 
the  object  of  friendly  insult  and  intolerable 
familiarity.  He  is  simply  being  tested,  as  any 

282 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

social  group  tests  a  new-comer;  the  only  dif- 
ference is  that  school-boys  have  no  reticences, 
and  they  accomplish  in  three  days  what  with 
their  elders  would  take  three  months  or  three 
years.  They  want  to  see  straight  off  how  the 
new  boy  will  take  them  and  their  manners. 
They  want  to  get  used  to  him  in  the  shortest 
order.  Above  all,  the  new  boy  must  not  cry 
or  sulk.  Let  him  grin  and  stand  up  to  it; 
let  him  return  insult  for  insult,  blow  for  blow, 
taunt  for  taunt,  and  it  is  soon  over;  he  is  ac- 
cepted at  once  as  a  brother,  and  has  henceforth 
an  equal  chance  with  every  member  of  the 
community. 

It  is  in  the  lower  grades  of  the  public  schools 
that  the  work  of  Americanizing  the  foreign- 
born  and  the  children  of  the  foreign-born  goes 
on,  often  with  a  thoroughness  that  leaves 
nothing  to  be  desired.  Mary  Antin  has  writ- 
ten a  fascinating  account  of  her  own  Amer- 
icanization, and  of  the  notable  part  which  the 
public  schools  played  in  it.  She  was  indeed 
an  exceptional  child — too  exceptional  to  be 
the  basis  of  any  generalization;  but  she  speaks 
also  for  thousands  of  others  upon  whom  the 
schools  have  had  a  similar  transforming  effect, 
but  who  were  doubtless  less  conscious  of  the 
process,  or  who  at  least  less  consciously  super- 
vised and  promoted  it.  It  is  not  worth  while, 
she  says — 

283 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

to  refer  to  voluminous  school  statistics  to  see  just  how 
many  "green"  pupils  entered  school  last  September, 
not  knowing  the  days  of  the  week  in  English,  who  next 
February  will  be  declaiming  patriotic  verses  in  honor 
of  George  Washington  and  Abraham  Lincoln,  with  a 
foreign  accent,  indeed,  but  with  plenty  of  enthusiasm. 
It  is  enough  to  know  that  this  hundredfold  miracle 
is  common  to  the  schools  in  every  part  of  the  United 
States  where  immigrants  are  received. 


The  miracle  is  perhaps  not  often  complete 
between  September  and  February.  Perhaps 
it  is  not  even  a  miracle  at  all,  but  a  very 
natural  process  of  transformation,  more  or 
less  independent  of  the  "enthusiasm"  of  the 
pupil ;  but  at  least  the  transformation  goes  on, 
and  it  goes  on  much  more  rapidly  in  the  schools 
than  it  does  anywhere  else. 

Miracle  or  not,  the  transformation  goes  on 
in  most  cases,  especially  in  the  case  of  boys, 
more  rapidly  and  more  effectively  on  the  play- 
ground than  in  the  school-room.  The  little 
German  or  Italian  boy  is  precisely  in  the  posi- 
tion of  a  new-comer,  except  that  an  extraor- 
dinary curiosity  attaches  to  him  on  account 
of  the  odd  clothes,  or  manner,  or  habit  of 
speech  that  is  likely  to  make  him  a  shining 
mark.  All  these  peculiarities  are  noted,  imi- 
tated in  derision,  and  advertised  as  fit  subjects 
for  ridicule.  The  boy's  name  is  of  no  im- 
portance; he  belongs  to  a  well-known  species 

284 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

—"Dutch"  or  "Dago,"  as  the  case  may  be — 
and  this  little  boy,  whose  parents  are  so  fondly 
endeavoring  to  keep  him  in  the  way  of  speak- 
ing German  or  Italian,  finds  that  his  constant 
companions  regard  any  "lingo"  as  reprehen- 
sible. The  little  boy  does  not  like  to  be  called 
"Dutch"  or  "Dago,"  and  his  one  consuming 
ambition  is  to  divest  himself  of  every  badge 
or  trait,  every  shred  of  costume,  every  man- 
nerism or  tone  of  voice,  which  might  dis- 
tinguish him  as  "different"  from  the  others. 
Hence  he  becomes  an  American  with  a  swift- 
ness that  amazes  his  parents.  The  process 
which  brings  about  this  transformation  is  a 
bit  brutal,  but  it  is  effective  and  enduring. 

The  high-schools  and  universities  are  es- 
sentially parts  of  the  public-school  system  in 
fact,  even  if  not  always  so  in  law.  Instruction 
covers  a  different  field  of  study  and  is  more  ad- 
vanced and  mature,  but  it  is  not  essentially 
different  in  kind.  The  high-school  pupil  stud- 
ies English  language  and  literature,  perhaps 
Latin  or  German,  history  and  government  and 
economics,  a  bit  of  botany,  or  physics,  or 
possibly  chemistry.  In  the  university  the  same 
subjects,  multiplied  and  specialized,  are  stud- 
ied, under  more  competent  masters  and  with 
added  facilities  and  in  greater  freedom;  but 
in  method  of  instruction  and  in  the  tests  ap- 
plied, the  transition  from  grammar  grade  to 

285 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

high-school,  from  high-school  to  university, 
is  in  no  sense  revolutionary.  Above  all,  in  the 
association  of  the  pupils  with  one  another, 
and  in  the  various  activities  and  "interests" 
which  they  pursue  outside  the  class-room,  the 
same  spirit  prevails  and  the  same  social  in- 
fluences are  at  work  as  in  the  grammar  grades. 
The  high-school  and  the  university  pupils 
play  the  same  games,  more  systematically  or- 
ganized, more  professionally,  and,  in  the  uni- 
versity, at  least,  in  somewhat  less  of  the  spirit 
of  the  "career  open  to  talent."  To  these  ac- 
tivities the  high-school  and  university  pupils 
add  other,  more  mature  and  more  sophisti- 
cated, social  activities — debating  and  literary 
clubs;  literary  periodicals  and  newspapers; 
class  organizations  with  their  elected  officers, 
and  the  "politics"  that  inevitably  accompany 
elections;  "society"  in  the  narrow  sense,  with 
its  receptions,  dances,  informal  "affairs,"  and 
the  jealousies  and  aspirations  and  triumphs 
which  attend  these  things. 

The  high-schools  and  universities,  taken  as 
a  whole,  are  true  reflections  of  American  life. 
Learning  has  in  them  as  much  and  as  little 
prestige  as  it  has  outside.  They  do  not  make, 
and  do  not  aim  to  make,  "scholars"  of  their 
pupils,  although  the  university  opens  the  door 
to  the  scholarly  life  for  those  who  seek  it. 
Nor  does  the  university  make  of  its  pupils  a 

286 


-AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

distinct  class  in  after-life.  There  is  in  both 
high-school  and  university  a  good  deal  of 
youthful  snobbery,  but  in  general  the  experi- 
ence is  wholesome,  and  it  tends  to  liberalize 
the  mind  and  broaden  the  sympathy  of  its 
beneficiaries.  The  members  of  the  higher 
schools  are  subjected  to  much  the  same  tests, 
although  in  more  subtle  and  urbane  ways, 
as  the  members  of  the  lower  schools;  in  a 
wider  field,  they  learn  to  co-operate  or  com- 
pete at  common  tasks  with  all  sorts  of  people; 
they  learn  to  detect  the  substance  beneath 
the  form,  and  to  accord  merit,  in  them- 
selves and  in  others,  to  talent  rather  than  to 
position. 

It  is  a  reflection,  as  well  as  a  confirmation, 
of  the  democratic  character  of  our  society 
that  poverty  is  no  bar  to  a  university  career. 
In  practically  every  college  and  university 
there  is  always  a  considerable  number  of  stu- 
dents who  pay  their  expenses  by  working 
during  odd  hours  in  term  time  or  throughout 
the  summer  vacations.  There  are  many  col- 
leges in  which  from  50  to  75  per  cent,  of  the 
students  pay  their  own  way  in  whole  or  in 
part,  a  circumstance  which  is  sure  to  strike 
the  European  observer  of  American  institu- 
tions as  singular,  very  likely  as  admirable, 
but  at  all  events  as  "so  American."  M.  Paul 
Bourget,  in  his  book  on  America  entitled, 

287 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Outre-Mer,  gives  some  specific  instances  that 
may  be  taken  as  typical. 

I  remember  [he  says]  when  I  was  in  Newport  being 
entirely  nonplussed  by  the  question  of  a  negro  who 
waited  upon  me  in  the  hotel,  a  sort  of  black  giant  whom 
up  to  that  time  I  had  admired  solely  for  his  dexterity 
in  carrying  on  the  flat  of  his  hand  a  tray  loaded  with 
six  or  seven  entire  dinners. 

"Is  it  true,  sir,"  he  asked  me,  "that  you  are  going 
to  write  a  book  about  America?" 

"Perhaps,"  I  replied.    "But  why  do  you  ask?" 

"  Because  I  should  much  like  to  have  a  copy  to  read 
this  winter  in  college." 

"The  negroes  are  so  vain,"  said  a  New  Yorker, 
to  whom  I  laughingly  related  this  dialogue.  "He 
wanted  to  make  you  think  he  knew  how  to  read."  .  .  . 
My  witty  interlocutor  was  mistaken.  It  was  not  in 
braggadocio  that  the  waiter  in  the  Newport  hotel  had 
spoken  of  his  college.  I  had  proof  of  this  when  .  .  . 
I  received  a  letter  which  I  cannot  refrain  from  setting 
down  here  in  all  its  artlessness,  so  significant  does  it 
appear  to  me. 

"I  write  you  a  few  lines  to  let  you  know  that  I  have 
succeeded  in  entering  college  as  I  hoped  to  do.  I 
entered  January  I,  and  am  getting  along  very  nicely 
with  my  studies.  My  wish  was  to  take  the  full,  regular 
course,  but  I  am  not  able  to  do  so  as  I  must  support 
myself  while  in  school.  I  must  therefore  content  my- 
self with  the  normal  and  scientific  course.  I  do  not 
precisely  know  what  I  shall  do  next  summer.  I  have 
thought  of  going  back  to  the  hotel  in  Newport,  but 
nothing  is  decided.  I  am  looking  for  a  copy  of  your 
book  when  it  is  finished." 

288 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

What  can  be  the  spirit  of  a  college  on  wnose  benches 
a  servant,  twenty  years  old  and  more,  may  take  his 
place  for  six  months  in  the  year,  between  two  terms  of 
service,  and  the  fact  not  appear  in  the  least  exceptional? 

M.  Bourget  relates  the  history  of  another 
student,  in  Harvard  University,  of  whom  he 
learned  from  Mr.  Frank  Bolles,  the  treasurer 
of  the  university.  The  statement  is  worth 
repeating,  not  because  it  is  exceptional,  but 
because  it  is  so  common  that  it  would  scarcely 
excite  comment  in  any  college  or  university 
in  the  United  States. 

The  poor  student  fixed  his  freshman  expenses  at 
$381,  his  sophomore  expenses  at  $361,  those  of  his 
junior  year  at  $395,  and  those  of  his  senior  year  at 
$462.  He  had  $25  of  debts  when  he  entered  Harvard. 
He  was,  therefore,  obliged  to  earn  money,  and  a  large 
sum  of  money,  during  these  four  years,  while  at  the 
same  time  pursuing  his  studies. 

The  details  of  the  methods  he  pursued  are  very  sig- 
nificant. As  freshman,  he  "made"  $346,  thus  divided: 
a  prize  of  $250,  a  loan  of  $15  on  his  watch,  $71  earned 
by  typewriting  for  his  fellow-students,  $8  by  selling 
books,  $2  by  tutoring. 

As  sophomore  he  used  the  same  methods,  except  that 
in  view  of  the  smallness  of  the  prize  gained  that  year, 
he  decided  to  wait  at  table.  His  work  as  waiter  brought 
him  $38.  It  may  be  remarked  that  this  is  not  an 
isolated  case.  Many  Harvard  students  gain  by  this 
means,  especially  during  vacations,  the  small  overplus 
of  resources  they  require.  This  student,  in  his  second 
year,  added  to  this  business  that  of  preparing  the  brains 

289 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  sheep  for  the  lectures  of  Prof.  William  James,  the 
great  psychologist. 

The  third  year — the  junior — appears  to  have  been 
easier.  Tutoring  brought  him  in  more — $120.  He 
got  work  in  the  library  that  helped  to  set  him  on  his 
feet.  A  large  prize  which  he  took  in  the  fourth  year 
put  an  end  to  his  difficulties,  and  he  left  college  at  the 
completion  of  his  studies,  having  met  all  his  expenses 
during  the  four  years  and  put  aside  a  small  sum  of 
money. 

This  is  a  perfect  specimen  of  the  American  student, 
and  Mr.  Bolles  is  right  in  concluding  at  the  close  of 
his  letter,  "A  young  man  who  has  gone  through  this 
is  certain  to  succeed  in  any  calling."  He  cites  among 
possible  careers  railway  service,  journalism,  book- 
publishing,  political  life,  and  teaching.  The  elasticity 
of  this  program  is  simply  in  conformity  with  the  genius 
of  a  country  where  a  man  finds  it  perfectly  natural  to 
change  his  profession  at  forty,  fifty,  or  sixty  years. 
One  consequence  of  this  facility  of  guiding  his  life  in 
the  most  opposite  directions  is  that  the  "poor  scholar" 
is  unknown  in  the  United  States.  The  students  who 
wait  upon  their  classmates,  napkin  on  arm  and  dish 
in  hand,  and  who  will  presently  be  sitting  on  the  same 
benches  with  them,  attending  the  same  lectures  and 
passing  the  same  examinations,  have,  if  one  may  so 
speak,  taken  and  given  a  lesson  of  destiny.  They 
know  and  they  demonstrate  that  the  man  of  energy 
accepts  all  and  conquers  all,  if  only  he  will.  Neither 
he  nor  his  fellow-students  will  forget  the  lesson. 

This  is  all  very  true  and  very  admirable. 
The  young  man  whose  career  M.  Bourget 
describes  was  an  excellent  young  man,  and 

the  training  which  he  received  was  an  excel- 

290 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

lent  training  for  almost  any  kind  of  endeavor 
in  after-life;  but  it  is  obvious  that  a  young 
man  with  so  much  seriousness  and  energy 
would  have  been  able  to  achieve  a  great  deal 
more  in  a  purely  intellectual  way  if  he  had  not 
been  so  heavily  handicapped  by  the  necessity 
of  earning  his  own  living.  And  the  result,  in 
colleges  where  there  are  so  many  serious  and 
able  young  men  who  are  handicapped  in  this 
way,  is  that  the  standards  of  scholarship  main- 
tained for  obtaining  the  degree  are  somewhat 
lowered  in  order  that  the  impossible  may  not 
be  required  of  such  students.  It  is  a  rare 
college  or  university  in  the  United  States  in 
which  an  intelligent  student  who  does  not 
have  to  earn  his  living  may  not  pass  the 
examinations  successfully  without  any  very 
concentrated  or  continued  mental  effort. 
The  presence  of  a  large  number  of  self- 
supporting  students  is  not  the  only  rea- 
son for  this,  but  it  is  one  of  the  reasons, 
and  one  of  the  most  difficult  to  deal  with 
practically. 

The  standards  for  the  degree  are,  of  course, 
only  a  minimum  requirement,  and  they  are 
no  measure  of  the  quality  of  the  universities. 
Particularly  in  the  better  universities,  any 
student  who  has  the  time,  the  desire,  and  the 
ability  may  obtain  intellectual  training  of  a 
high  order.  Twenty-five  years  ago  so  com- 

291 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

patent  a  judge  as  Mr.  Bryce  gave  his  deliber- 
ate opinion  on  this  point: 

The  higher  learning  [in  the  United  States]  is  in  no 
danger.  The  great  universities  of  the  East,  as  well  as 
one  or  two  in  the  West,  are  already  beginning  to  rival 
the  ancient  universities  of  Europe.  .  .  .  An  Englishman 
who  visits  America  can  never  feel  sure  how  far  his 
judgment  has  been  affected  by  the  warmth  of  the  wel- 
come he  receives.  But  if  I  may  venture  to  state  the 
impression  which  the  American  universities  have  made 
on  me,  I  will  say  that  while  of  all  the  institutions  of 
the  country  they  are  those  of  which  Americans  speak 
most  modestly,  and  indeed  deprecatingly,  they  are 
those  which  seem  to  be  at  this  moment  making  the 
swiftest  progress  and  to  have  the  brightest  promise 
for  the  future.  They  are  supplying  exactly  those 
things  which  European  critics  have  hitherto  found 
lacking  to  America:  and  they  are  contributing  to  her 
political  as  well  as  to  her  contemplative  life  elements 
of  inestimable  worth. 

This  is  no  doubt  true,  and  it  is  no  doubt  as 
true  now  as  it  was  twenty-five  years  ago, 
although  university  faculties  themselves  com- 
plain of  the  decline  of  scholarship  both  among 
the  students  and  among  the  instructors.  It  is 
no  doubt  a  part  of  the  business  of  faculties  to 
complain  of  the  decline  of  scholarship,  and 
there  is  at  least  little  evidence  that  productive 
scholarship  is  at  a  lower  level  now  than  for- 
merly. But  of  course  when  one  speaks  of  the 
"higher  learning"  and  productive  scholarship 

292 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

in  our  universities,  or  in  any  universities,  one 
has  in  mind  a  relatively  small  part  of  universi- 
ties as  a  whole.  At  least,  this  is  true  in  respect 
to  American  universities.  Apart  from  our 
best  graduate  schools,  the  greater  part  of  our 
universities,  what  we  call  our  undergraduate 
colleges,  have  little  to  do  with  productive 
scholarship  or  the  "higher  learning/'  They  are 
essentially  schools  devoted  to  furnishing  stu- 
dents the  elements  of  "general  culture";  they 
are  in  fact  scarcely  more  than  extensions  of 
the  high-schools,  and  as  such  they  are  signif- 
icant in  a  social  rather  than  in  an  intellectual 
way ;  they  are  significant  in  reflecting  and  con- 
firming American  life  rather  than  in  adding 
to  it.  Both  in  high-school  and  university  the 
pupils  receive  instruction  from  their  teachers, 
and  good  instruction  it  often  is;  but  essentially 
the  pupils  educate  themselves  by  playing  on  a 
miniature  stage  the  drama  of  American  life. 
In  playing  this  drama  they  acquire  a  keener 
sense  of  its  meaning,  a  more  conscious  feeling 
for  its  spirit  and  its  possibilities.  An  Amer- 
ican boy  may  easily  go  through  the  public 
schools  from  the  primary  grade  to  the  end  of 
the  college  course  without  acquiring  much 
knowledge  of  books,  or  any  taste  for  the  things 
of  the  mind,  or  any  capacity  for  handling 
ideas;  but  he  cannot  do  so  easily  without 
meeting  all  sorts  of  people,  without  finding 

293 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

his  level  among  these  people,  without  being 
subjected  to  tests  which  ignore  his  pet  egoisms 
and  his  carefully  nourished  illusions,  without 
learning  that  poverty  is  not  a  disgrace  nor 
good  manners  a  sign  of  weakness,  without  be- 
coming in  some  measure  aware  of  that  es- 
sentially democratic  truth  that  the  merit  of  a 
man  is  independent  of  the  externals  which 
distinguish  him,  and  of  the  accidents  which 
place  him  high  or  low  in  the  social  scale. 

This  has  been  well  enough  in  the  past,  but 
it  is  doubtful  whether  it  will  continue  to  be 
so  in  the  future ;  and  it  is  a  significant  fact  that 
our  school  system,  from  top  to  bottom,  is  just 
now  under  rather  general  and  drastic  criticism. 
So  long  as  American  life  is  essentially  demo- 
cratic, as  it  has  been  in  the  past,  the  public 
schools,  even  if  they  do  no  more  than  to  reflect 
and  confirm  that  life,  must  have  a  powerful 
democratic  influence.  But  if,  as  there  are 
many  indications,  and  as  many  people  are 
coming  to  think,  American  life  is  becoming  less 
democratic  than  it  was — if  class  divisions  are 
becoming  more  marked  and  more  permanent, 
if  political  freedom  is  becoming  ineffective 
because  economic  freedom  is  disappearing,  if 
plutocracy  is  becoming  the  substance  and  de- 
mocracy only  the  form  of  American  society — 
if  this  is  what  the  future  holds,  then  the  public 
schools  can  no  longer  serve  democracy  to  any 

294 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

purpose  by  merely  reflecting  and  confirming 
the  conditions  of  life.  Their  task,  in  that  case, 
is  to  work  against  these  conditions.  This,  in 
a  general  way,  is  the  task  of  the  public  schools 
for  the  future;  and  in  order  to  accomplish 
this  task  they  must  be  informed  by  a  more 
conscious  and  deliberate  purpose  than  they 
have  been ;  they  must  devote  themselves  with 
better  talent  and  greater  concentration  to 
things  intellectual;  they  must  lead  and  not 
follow  the  best  thought  of  the  age,  shape  and 
not  be  shaped  by  the  pressure  of  economic 
and  social  tendencies.  This  will  be  no  slight 
undertaking,  but  it  will  be  no  more  difficult 
than  democracy  itself,  of  which,  indeed,  it  will 
be  an  essential  condition. 
20 


X 

DEMOCRACY   AND    EQUALITY 


SINCE  the  French  Revolution  liberty  and 
equality  have  been  words  to  conjure  with, 
perhaps  because  their  meaning  is  not  capable 
of  very  precise  definition.  They  are  commonly 
used  together,  as  though  they  were  but  different 
aspects  of  the  same  thing;  but  many  people 
find,  upon  analysis,  that  they  mean  precisely 
opposite  things.  Men  cannot  be  made  equal, 
they  say,  without  being  subject  to  a  great  deal 
of  restraint,  for  perfect  equality  would  mean 
that  no  man  could  be  permitted  to  have  what 
any  other  man  could  not  have,  or  to  do  what 
any  other  man  could  not  do.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  maintained,  a  man  cannot  be  per- 
fectly free  unless  he  is  allowed  to  do  as  he 
likes.  According  to  these  people,  therefore, 
the  desire  for  liberty  is  contrary  to  the  desire 
for  equality,  so  that  if  liberty  is  what  men 
want  they  ought  to  renounce  the  idea  of 

296 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

equality,  and  if  equality  is  what  they  want 
they  ought  to  renounce  the  idea  of  liberty. 

The  men  who  inaugurated  the  French  Revo- 
lution evidently  did  not  think  that  this  was 
true,  since  they  desired  and  demanded  both 
liberty  and  equality,  not  to  speak  of  fraternity 
in  addition.  In  their  famous  "  Declaration 
of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  the  Citizen"  they 
proclaimed  that  "all  men  are  born  free  and 
equal  in  rights";  and  they  were  so  far  from 
thinking  that  liberty  and  equality  were  in- 
consistent with  each  other  that  they  defined 
them  in  the  same  phrase.  "Liberty/'  they 
said,  "consists  in  the  freedom  to  do  every- 
thing which  injures  no  one  else;  hence  the 
exercise  of  the  natural  rights  of  each  man  has 
no  limits  except  those  which  assure  to  the 
other  members  of  society  the  enjoyment  of 
the  same  rights."  This  is  perfectly  clear  as  a 
principle,  although  the  application  of  the 
principle  may  not  be  very  easy.  By  this 
definition  liberty  does  not  mean  the  right  of 
a  man  to  do  as  he  pleases,  but  only  the  right 
to  do  as  he  pleases  in  so  far  as  he  does  not 
please  to  interfere  with  the  equal  right  of 
every  other  man.  The  emphasis  is  chiefly  on 
equality,  for  liberty  is  defined  in  terms  of 
equality;  and  M.  Emile  Faguet  has  written 
a  brilliant  essay  to  prove  that  to  the  men  of 
the  Revolution  liberty  and  equality  meant  the 

297 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

same  thing;  that  what  they  chiefly  wanted 
was  equality,  and  that  they  believed  that  if 
men  had  equality  they  would  thereby  have  all 
the  liberty  they  needed  or  were  likely  to  want. 


ii 

M.  Faguet  is  doubtless  right.  But  even  if 
the  men  of  the  Revolution  had  their  minds 
fixed  primarily  upon  equality,  they  expected 
to  get  it  not  so  much  by  imposing  restraints 
as  by  removing  them.  They  found  themselves 
living  in  a  world  where  the  most  glaring  in- 
equalities existed;  but  these  inequalities  were 
sanctioned  by  laws  and  customs  which  re- 
strained one  man  from  doing  what  another 
man  was  permitted  to  do.  The  peasant  or  the 
noble  was  forbidden  to  do  what  the  member 
of  the  industrial  gild  could  do;  the  gilds- 
man  was  forbidden  to  do  what  the  noble 
could  do;  and  every  man  was  forbidden  or 
required  to  do  whatever  the  king  might  take 
it  into  his  head  to  command.  The  men  of  the 
Revolution  were,  therefore,  convinced  that 
the  glaring  inequalities  that  existed  were  due 
to  the  fact  that  a  man's  liberty  of  action  was 
thwarted  and  restrained  at  every  turn  by 
quite  senseless  restraints.  It  was  for  this  rea- 
son that  they  saw  liberty  and  equality  as 
two  parts  of  the  same  thing.  They  easily 

298 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

supposed  that  if  the  existing  restraints  upon 
liberty  of  action  were  removed,  the  existing 
inequalities  in  conditions  between  classes  and 
individuals  would  largely  disappear.  Thus 
they  expected  to  get  equality  of  conditions  by 
the  simple  process  of  removing  the  legal  re- 
straints upon  liberty  of  action. 

In  carrying  out  this  program  there  were 
three  kinds  of  liberty  which  they  wished  to 
establish:  personal  liberty,  industrial  liberty, 
and  political  liberty.  By  personal  liberty  they 
meant  that  no  man  should  be  bound  to  any 
other  contrary  to  his  will,  nor  subject  to  arbi- 
trary arrest  and  imprisonment  by  the  govern- 
ment; and  in  addition  they  meant  that  every 
man  should  be  free  to  speak  and  publish  his 
opinions.  By  industrial  liberty  they  meant 
that  every  man  should  have  the  right  to  en- 
gage in  any  legitimate  occupation,  the  right 
to  sell  his  labor  by  a  free  contract,  the  right 
to  buy  or  sell  commodities  unhampered  by 
legally  established  restrictions  or  privileges. 
By  political  liberty  they  meant  the  abolition 
of  arbitrary  government,  the  establishment  of 
a  government  controlled  by  the  governed  and 
acting  only  on  the  sanction  of  laws  which 
should  be  the  same  for  all. 

The  men  of  the  Revolution  believed  that  if 
they  established  these  liberties  the  desired 
equality  would  thereby,  automatically,  as  it 

299 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

were,  be  attained.  They  reasoned  that  if 
political  liberty  existed  the  laws  would  be 
equitable,  because  the  people  who  made  the 
laws  would  be  the  very  people  who  had  to 
submit  to  them.  This  result  would  be  further 
guaranteed  by  that  freedom  of  thought  which, 
by  enabling  every  man  to  declare  his  interest 
and  express  his  opinion,  would  enable  the 
people  to  know  what  laws  were  just  and 
equitable.  Above  all,  they  reasoned  that  in- 
dustrial liberty  would  result  in  a  reasonable 
degree  of  economic  equality;  for  if  every  man 
was  free  to  engage  in  any  occupation,  to  sell 
his  labor,  or  the  products  of  his  labor,  where 
he  could  get  the  most  for  them,  and  to  buy 
what  he  needed  where  he  could  get  it  at  the 
lowest  price,  why,  then,  generally  speaking, 
one  man  would  have  as  good  a  chance  as 
another  and  each  man's  share  in  the  common 
wealth  would  be  determined  largely  by  his 
own  efforts.  Men  would  no  doubt  differ  in 
ability;  but  it  was  supposed  that  with  a  sys- 
tem of  free  elementary  education  any  man  of 
reasonable  intelligence  and  industry  might 
acquire  the  skill  and  practise  the  frugality 
which  would  enable  him  to  support  himself  and 
his  family  in  comfort  and  content. 

The  men  who  formulated  the  philosophy 
of  the  Revolution  were  mainly  of  the  middle 
class;  and  in  its  earlier  and  later  stages  the 

300 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Revolution  was  mainly  directed  by  this  class 
—it  was  what  is  called  a  bourgeois  movement. 
To  these  people  the  idea  of  achieving  equality 
through  the  removal  of  restraints  upon  liberty 
was  entirely  satisfactory,  and  to  them  it  re- 
mained so  long  after  the  lower  classes  found 
it  entirely  unsatisfactory;  they  felt  that  if  they 
had  enough  freedom  of  action  they  could  take 
care  of  themselves,  and  they  easily  persuaded 
themselves  that  the  peasants  and  working-men 
would  be  much  better  off  than  they  had  been. 
The  peasants,  in  France  at  least,  certainly  were 
a  good  deal  better  off  because  they  came  into 
full  ownership  of  their  land,  and  the  taxes 
which  they  paid  to  the  state  after  the  Revolu- 
tion were  very  much  less  than  the  taxes  and 
feudal  dues  which  they  paid  before.  But  on 
the  whole,  it  must  be  said  that  the  liberties 
which  the  Revolution  brought  with  it  were 
chiefly  advantageous  to  the  bourgeoisie.  The 
political  freedom  which  it  established,  al- 
though based  upon  the  doctrine  of  popular 
sovereignty,  placed  the  government  in  the 
hands  of  the  educated  people  and  the  owners 
of  property;  the  freedom  of  opinion  and  of 
the  press  for  a  long  time  in  France  meant 
scarcely  more  than  the  freedom  to  express 
such  opinions  as  respectable  middle-class  peo- 
ple were  not  afraid  of;  the  industrial  freedom 
which  followed  the  abolition  of  the  old  medi- 

301 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

eval  gilds  and  trade  corporations  was  an  ad- 
vantage to  the  men  with  capital,  but  proved 
in  the  end  disastrous  to  the  laborer.  The 
"liberty"  established  by  the  Revolution  was 
indeed  mainly  a  bourgeois  affair;  and  so  far 
from  working  automatically  to  bring  about  an 
ideal  "equality,"  it  only  brought  about  an 
equality  between  the  middle  and  upper  classes. 
In  no  respect  did  the  revolutionary  theory 
of  liberty  and  equality  break  down  so  com- 
pletely as  in  the  field  of  industrial  activity. 
The  revolutionary  leaders  were  so  impressed 
with  the  desirability  of  complete  economic 
freedom  that  they  not  only  destroyed  the  old 
legally  established  gilds  and  close  corpora- 
tions, but  they  attempted  to  prevent  the  for- 
mation of  private  and  voluntary  co-operative 
industrial  organizations.  They  were  so  de- 
termined to  make  every  man  economically 
free  that  when  the  working-men  of  Paris 
formed  a  kind  of  union  in  order  to  fix  a  mini- 
mum wage,  and  organized  a  strike  to  enforce 
such  a  wage,  and  attempted  to  prevent  other 
workers  from  working  for  a  lower  wage,  a  law 
was  passed  forbidding  citizens  engaged  in  any 
industry  or  trade  to  form  any  organization 
whatever  for  the  regulation  of  their  common 
interests.  This  was  done  on  the  theory  that 
every  man  must  be  free  to  sell  his  labor  or  his 
commodities  to  the  highest  bidder.  Every 

302 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

man  must  be  free,  whether  he  wanted  to  or 
not,  because  a  man  who  was  subjected  even 
to  the  self-imposed  restraints  of  a  labor-union 
would  not  be  in  a  position  of  equality  with  a 
man  who  was  not  subject  to  such  restraints. 

For  over  half  a  century  the  revolutionary 
theory  that  complete  freedom  of  contract  in 
the  industrial  field  would  bring  about  the 
greatest  degree  of  economic  prosperity  for  all 
men,  the  theory  of  laissez-faire,  was  the  pre- 
vailing theory,  at  least  among  the  ruling 
classes.  Everywhere  it  failed.  Everywhere, 
sooner  or  later,  it  brought  about  a  glaring 
inequality  of  wealth.  In  every  country,  al- 
though not  with  the  same  rapidity,  it  brought 
about  the  concentration  of  wealth  and  eco- 
nomic power,  and  therefore  of  political  power 
also,  in  the  hands  of  great  capitalists,  bankers, 
manufacturers,  and  landowners,  while  the 
mass  of  the  agricultural  population  remained 
poor,  and  the  laborers  in  the  industrial  centers 
were  reduced  to  conditions  of  life  which  the 
term  "wage-slaves"  graphically  and  accu- 
rately described. 

This  result  of  the  revolutionary  theory  was 
nowhere  so  soon  or  so  obviously  worked  out 
as  in  England;  and  the  reason  for  that  was 
that  the  industrial  revolution,  which  was 
the  most  important  economic  phenomenon  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  began  first  and  pro- 

303 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

gressed  most  rapidly  in  that  country.  The 
fact  is  that  the  revolutionary  theory,  on  its 
economic  side,  suited  only  to  society  with  a 
rudimentary  industrial  life,  has  broken  down, 
and  it  is  bound  to  break  down  in  every 
country  where  industrial  life  becomes  com- 
plex, and  in  proportion  to  such  complexity. 
In  Europe  it  has  therefore  broken  down  in 
every  country  in  proportion  to  the  develop- 
ment of  what  is  called  the  industrial  revo- 
lution. 

The  basis  of  the  industrial  revolution  is 
the  increasing  application  of  material  forces 
to  the  production  of  wealth.  Technical  in- 
ventions, the  use  of  steam  and  electrical  power, 
have  transformed  the  processes  of  the  pro- 
duction and  the  transportation  of  wealth,  and 
have  thereby  vitally  affected  the  distribution 
of  it.  The  use  of  machinery  makes  it  possible 
to  multiply  ten,  a  hundred,  a  thousandfold, 
the  results  of  one  man's  labor.  But  to  get  the 
most  out  of  machinery  it  is  necessary  to  carry 
on  industrial  operations  on  a  large  scale,  and 
this  means  that  industry  must  be  concentrated 
at  particular  points,  and  it  means,  above  all, 
that  the  production  and  transportation  of 
wealth  cannot  be  carried  on  profitably  without 
the  use  of  a  great  deal  of  wealth  to  begin  with, 
in  the  form  of  "capital."  Under  the  conditions 
brought  about  by  the  industrial  revolution 

304 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

capital  was,  above  all,  necessary;  and  accord- 
ingly the  possession  of  great  wealth  meant 
something  more  than  that  its  possessor  could 
live  in  a  better  house  and  eat  better  food  and 
have  better  clothes  and  a  better  time  generally 
than  a  poor  man;  it  meant  that  by  means  of 
his  wealth — by  investing  his  capital  in  great 
industrial  enterprises — he  could  take  to  him- 
self all  that  multiplied  power  which  was 
stored  up  in  the  steam  and  electricity  and  the 
technical  machines  through  which  alone  the 
production  and  transportation  of  commodities 
could  be  most  profitably  carried  on. 

Under  these  conditions,  to  say  that  every 
man  should  be  free  to  sell  his  labor,  or  the 
products  of  his  labor,  to  the  highest  bidder 
sounds  much  like  some  huge  Rabelaisian  pleas- 
antry. The  poor  man  could  only  sell  his  labor 
and  not  the  product  of  it;  whereas  the  rich 
man  could  sell  his  labor,  plus  the  product  of 
his  capital  in  the  form  of  machine  labor,  plus 
the  product  of  the  labor  of  the  men  whom 
his  capital  employed  to  work  his  machines 
for  him.  This  would  not  have  been  so  in- 
equitable if  the  laborer  could  have  obtained 
in  wages  the  real  share  of  the  product  which 
his  labor  produced.  But  this  he  could  not  do 
because,  on  account  of  the  unlimited  expan- 
sion of  machine  power  in  production,  there  was 
never,  or  rarely,  more  capital  than  could  be 

305 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

profitably  employed,  while  there  were  always, 
or  nearly  always,  more  laborers  than  were 
needed,  since  the  use  of  machines  reduced 
relatively  the  number  of  laborers  required  and 
at  the  same  time,  through  the  employment  of 
women  and  children,  increased  the  number  of 
laborers  available.  The_iesujt_jaaji.  that  the 
individual  laborer^jwho  had  to  work  or  starve, 
haHjTLJ^Jl-Jiis  l^kor.  for  what  the  capital- 
ist would  pay  for  it  rather  than  for  what  it 
produced. 

"Thus  the  liberty  which  the  Revolution  es- 
tablished in  the  industrial  world  meant  that 
"to  him  that  hath  shall  be  given,  and  to  him 
that  hath  not  shall  be  taken  away  even  that 
which  he  hath."  It  meant,  for  the  laborer,  the 
liberty  to  sell  his  labor  for  a  bare  existence, 
if  happily  there  was  any  one  who  would 
buy  it  at  any  price;  and  it  meant,  for  the 
capitalist,  the  liberty  to  sell  his  own  labor 
(if  indeed  he  cared  to  work  at  all),  plus  the 
labor  of  as  many  men  and  as  many  machines 
as  his  capital  represented.  The  result  has 
been,  throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
increasing  concentration  of  wealth  and  of  the 
industrial  power  which  it  represents  in  the 
hands  of  a  small  class,  and  the  increasing 
power  of  this  small  class  over  the  production 
and  distribution  of  wealth,  and  therefore  over 
the  lives,  the  fortunes,  and  the  happiness  of 

306 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

all.  In  the  economic  sense,  there  is  for  the 
great  mass  of  men  and  women  neither  liberty 
nor  equality.  Without  a  much  greater  degree 
of  both  than  now  exists,  the  personal  and 
political  liberties  which  have  been  so  hardly 
won  through  a  century  of  struggle  lose  half 
their  importance,  and  democracy  itself  is 
scarcely  more  than  a  pious  hope. 


in 

In  no  country  was  the  eighteenth-century 
philosophy  of  liberty  and  equality  so  con- 
fidently, or  perhaps  so  unconsciously,  ac- 
cepted as  in  the  United  States ;  to  no  country 
was  it  so  well  suited;  in  no  country  had  it 
(until  recently)  worked  so  well  or  been  so 
long  unquestioned. 

There  are  many  reasons  why  this  should 
have  been  so.  The  United  States  was,  rela- 
tively speaking,  accustomed  to  free  govern- 
ment, free  speech,  freedom  of  religion,  and 
freedom  of  contract  from  the  earliest  days  of 
its  history.  No  violent  revolution  was  re- 
quired, as  in  France,  to  establish  these  prin- 
ciples in  practice,  and  the  principles  them- 
selves never  had  to  win  their  way  against 
powerful  and  persistent  traditions  of  a  dif- 
ferent regime.  But  above  all,  the  eighteenth- 
century  philosophy  of  liberty  was  not  incon- 

30? 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

sistent  with  the  existence  of  essential  equality. 
In  its  origin  the  United  States  was  almost 
exclusively  an  agricultural  community,  and 
until  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury it  has  never  developed  more  than  a  rudi- 
mentary industrial  life.  The  reason  for  this 
was,  of  course,  the  lack  of  capital  at  low  rates 
of  interest,  and  an  abundance  of  good  land 
at  very  low  prices.  No  industrial  laborer  was 
likely  to  work  for  starvation  wages  so  long 
as  he  could  go  West  and  become  the  owner  of 
one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  land  for  the 
trouble  of  improving  it.  So  long  as  any  man 
could  readily  become  a  landowner,  a  highly 
complex  industrial  life  could  not  easily  be 
developed,  and  it  remained  true  that  the  ex- 
istence of  political,  personal,  and  industrial 
liberty  did  bring  about,  more  or  less  auto- 
matically, an  exceptional  degree  of  equality. 

The  conditions  which  so  long  existed  in  the 
United  States  not  only  brought  about  a  fair 
degree  of  equality  among  individuals,  but  they 
prevented  the  formation  of  any  defined  or 
persistent  class  inequalities.  Any  individual 
could  consent  with  some  cheerfulness  to  be 
poor  to-day,  since  there  was  always  an  even 
chance  that  to-morrow  he  would  be  "well 
fixed."  The  son  of  a  laborer  could  without 
undue  optimism  look  forward  to  becoming  an 
employer;  the  son  of  a  farmer  was  never  des- 

308 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

tined  to  follow  the  plow,  but  might  reasonably 
aspire  to  the  high  dignity  of  a  college  pro- 
fessorship. In  a  country  where  changes  in 
fortune  and  social  status  were  so  rapid  and 
so  common  the  people  inevitably  acquired  a 
spirit  of  buoyant  optimism  which  discounted 
such  inequalities  as  existed;  if  they  had  not 
equality  they  projected  it  into  the  immediate 
future,  and  in  that  future,  rather  than  in  the 
present,  they  lived  their  lives.  The  tragedy 
in  the  life  of  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie's  Admirable 
Crichton,  says  Mr.  Herbert  Croly — 

was  not  due  to  any  prohibition  of  his  conversion  in 
England,  as  on  the  tropic  island,  into  a  veritable  chief, 
but  that  on  English  soil  he  did  not  in  his  own  soul  want 
any  such  elevation  and  distinction.  His  very  loyalty 
to  the  forms  and  fabrics  of  English  life  kept  him  fatu- 
ously content  with  the  mean  truckling  and  meaner 
domineering  of  his  position  as  butler.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  loyalty  of  the  American  to  the  American 
idea  would  tend  to  make  him  aggressive  and  self- 
confident.  Our  democratic  prohibition  of  any  but 
occasional  social  distinctions  and  our  democratic  dis- 
like to  any  suggestion  of  authentic  social  inferiority 
have  contributed  as  essentially  to  the  fluid  and  elastic 
substance  of  American  life  as  have  its  abundant  and 
accessible  economic  opportunities. 

Thus  it  is  that  for  a  hundred  years,  thanks 
to  an  abundnace  of  land,  a  settled  democratic 
habit  of  mind,  and  a  people  in  whom  resource- 

309 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

fulness  and  self-confidence  have  come  to  be_ 
almost  acquired  characteristics,  the  United 
States  preserved  an  equality  of  opportunity 
and  of  conditions  quite  unknown  in  Europe. 
It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  United 
States  still  preserves  a  naive  faith  in  the 
political  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
whereas  in  Europe  it  has  long  since  been 
abandoned  by  most  forward-looking  men.  The 
average  American  still  believes  that  our 
equality  is  the  automatic  result  of  our  liberty; 
he  still  believes  that  the  high  average  of  well- 
being  in  the  United  States  is  the  result  of  free 
government  and  the  superior  character  of  its 
people;  he  still  believes  that  the  theory  of 
"supply  and  demand"  is  a  beautiful  doctrine, 
that  there  is  a  kind  of  magic  in  the  word 
"competition,"  and  that  "individual  initia- 
tive" is  one  of  the  natural  rights  referred  to 
in  the  Declaration  of  Independence;  he  still 
believes  that  the  interest  of  each  and  the  wel- 
fare of  all  will  continue  to  be  realized  in  the 
future  as  in  the  past  by  applying  the  good  old 
rule  of  "every  man  for  himself  and  the  devil 
take  the  hindmost."  Whoever  is  hindmost,  he 
thinks,  is  so  by  his  own  fault ;  he  has  failed  to 
take  advantage  of  the  opportunities  which 
every  American  has. 

The  truth  is,  of  course,  that  it  is  not  our  free 
government,  but  our  fortunate  economic  situ- 

310 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

ation,  that  has  hitherto  been  the  solid  basis  of 
our  equality;  and  this  fortunate  situation  is 
unhappily  rapidly  passing  away.  The  close 
of  the  nineteenth  century  marks  the  close  of 
an  era.  It  was  the  period,  on  the  one  hand, 
when  the  great  areas  of  fertile  and  accessible 
land  were  occupied;  on  the  other  hand,  it 
was  the  period  when  the  United  States  began 
to  develop  with  amazing  rapidity  a  concen- 
trated and  complex  industrial  life.  What 
this  transition  means  should  be  fairly  obvi- 
ous, for  it  is  one  of  the  many  advantages  of 
the  United  States  that  it  may,  if  it  will,  profit 
by  the  experience  of  European  countries. 
The  industrial  revolution  has  long  been  an 
accomplished  fact  in  many  parts  of  the  Old 
World.  The  transformation  in  economic  and 
social  conditions  which  it  brings  in  its  train, 
the  problems  which  it  sets  for  solution,  the 
solutions  which  have  been  attempted  and 
which  have  failed  or  been  in  part  successful, 
are  all  there  revealed  as  in  an  open  book. 
The  obvious  fact  of  our  generation  is  that  the 
United  States  is  rapidly  passing  through  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  industrial  revolution,  and 
that  it  must  expect  to  be  confronted  with  the 
same  conditions,  however  more  slowly  de- 
veloped or  in  whatever  less  acute  form,  which 
have  appeared  in  those  countries  where  it  has 
occurred. 

21  311 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

As  yet  the  United  States  is  far  from  being 
as  highly  industrialized  as  England  or  Bel- 
gium or  many  other  European  countries;  but 
the  significant  fact  is  the  rapidity  with  which 
it  is  becoming  so.  Within  a  generation  it  has 
acquired  the  unenviable  reputation,  which 
many  people  fatuously  take  to  be  a  mark  of 
virtue,  of  being  pre-eminently  the  land  of 
gigantic  trusts  and  combinations,  the  country 
of  millionaires,  the  country  blessed  with  the 
"richest  man  in  the  world."  In  fact,  the 
United  States  is  now  known  abroad  less  for 
being  the  land  of  liberty  than  for  being  the 
land  of  "big  business/'  and  of  financial  opera- 
tions of  a  boldness  and  reach  never  before 
dreamed  of;  and  within  twenty-five  years, 
although  still  one  of  the  greatest  agricultural 
countries,  the  growth  of  great  cities  and  the 
rapid  industrialization  of  certain  regions  have 
been  so  marked  that  books  have  been  written 
to  prove  that  within  no  great  time  New  York 
will  replace  London  as  the  commercial  and 
financial  center  of  the  world's  exchanges. 

Industrial  development  was,  of  course, 
bound  to  come  in  the  United  States  in  pro- 
portion as  the  best  lands  were  taken,  as  the 
country  became  relatively  populated,  and  as 
capital  increased  and  interest  declined.  The 
natural  resources  of  the  country,  in  the  way 
of  forests,  coal  and  iron  deposits,  and  other 

312 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

essential  raw  materials,  were  such  that  no 
other  result  was  possible  or  desirable.  And 
this  inevitable  trend  of  development  was  de- 
liberately fostered  by  the  government.  From 
an  early  date  the  federal  government  adopted 
the  policy  of  aiding  in  the  construction  of 
highways;  and  the  states  and  cities  have 
granted  untold  wealth  to  corporations  in  the 
form  of  land  and  franchises  in  order  to  induce 
them  to  construct  railroads  and  street-car 
lines,  and  to  supply  gas,  electricity,  water,  and 
telegraph  and  telephone  service.  Above  all, 
the  federal  government,  during  the  greater 
part  of  our  history  since  1816,  has  adopted 
the  policy  of  high  tariffs  for  the  avowed  pur- 
pose of  protecting  American  manufactures 
from  European  competition.  "Infant  indus- 
tries/' it  was  argued,  needed  the  paternal  and 
fostering  care  of  the  government  if  they  were 
ever  to  grow  to  maturity;  and  the  giant 
stature  which  many  of  these  "infants"  have 
attained  in  recent  years  is  due  quite  as  much 
to  governmental  aid  as  it  is  to  the  "intelli- 
gence and  initiative  of  the  American  business 
man."  This  policy  of  extending  governmental 
aid  in  the  industrial  development  of  the  coun- 
try has  been  so  extensively  and  persistently 
followed  that  from  an  early  date  it  came  to  be 
known  as  "the  American  system";  and  the 
American  system  was  designed  to  do  for 

313 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

industry  much  what  the  public  land  policy 
did  for  agriculture. 

Never  was  the  American  system  so  exten- 
sively practised  as  after  the  Civil  War;  and 
never  were  the  conditions  so  favorable  for  the 
development  of  "big  business."  The  people 
turned  with  a  sigh  of  relief  from  the  high 
tension  of  the  slavery  controversy  and  the 
taut  emotional  enthusiasm  of  the  war  to  the 
prosaic  business  of  attending  to  their  own 
affairs.  American  history  records  no  era 
more  materially  minded  than  the  twenty-five 
years  from  1865  to  1890.  The  South  was 
ruined,  and  the  one  immediate  task  was  the 
reorganization  of  its  social  system  and  the 
rehabilitation  of  its  economic  life.  For  a 
generation  the  North  likewise,  but  with 
greater  energy,  became  absorbed  in  the  en- 
ticing game  of  exploiting  the  material  re- 
sources of  the  country.  The  average  man 
felt  that,  havings  uppressed  the  Rebellion  and 
abolished  slavery,  he  had  done  a  good  job 
and  could  no  longer  be  expected  to  be  his 
brother's  keeper. 

Politics  reflected  the  inevitable  reaction 
from  the  idealism  of  the  war.  The  defeat  of 
the  South,  and  the  discredit  which  that  de- 
feat placed  upon  the  Democratic  party,  left 
the  Presidency  and  the  Senate,  at  least,  if 
not  the  House  of  Representatives,  for  the 

3H 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

most  part  m  the  undisputed  control  of  the 
Northern  Republicans.  Politics  still  turned 
on  the  dead  issues  of  the  Civil  War;  and  a 
passionate  denunciation  of  the  "rebellion," 
of  the  Southern  "traitors"  who  had  led  it 
and  the  Northern  "copperheads"  who  had 
abbetted  it,  was  a  sufficient  qualification  to 
elect  any  candidate  to  high  office.  In  this 
era  of  public  apathy,  of  sordid  politics,  and 
of  mediocre  statesmen,  the  industrial  brigand 
tied  himself  to  the  dominant  party  and  was 
given  a  free  field.  The  unlovely  history  of 
many  a  "big  business,"  builded  upon  special 
privilege  and  political  corruption  and  the 
cynical  wrecking  of  small  business  enterprise, 
was  all  too  common  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century;  and  when  the  public 
conscience  began  to  stir  in  the  'nineties  it  was 
confronted  with  the  amazing  fact  that  in  this 
land  of  democracy  and  equal  opportunity  a 
large  proportion  of  the  wealth  of  the  country 
was  in  the  hands  of  a  relatively  small  part  of 
the  population,  and  that  an  industrial  and 
financial  mechanism  had  been  constructed 
through  which  the  magnates  of  business 
could  exercise  a  dangerous  influence  upon  the 
lives  and  fortunes  of  the  people. 

For  many  years  the  people  had  watched 
with  complacent  satisfaction  the  marvelous 
development  of  big  business.  They  con- 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

gratulated  themselves  and  the  country  on  the 
admirable  results  of  "individual  initiative," 
and  exhibited  an  attitude  of  indifference,  or 
even  of  hostility,  toward  the  efforts  of  the 
industrial  workers  to  obtain,  through  unions 
and  by  means  of  strikes,  a  fair  wage  and 
decent  conditions  of  living.  They  said  that 
these  were  "un-American"  methods;  at- 
tempts to  restrict  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  work  for  whom  he  pleased,  and 
under  such  conditions  as  he  might  choose; 
and  they  were  rather  pleased  than  otherwise 
when  the  great  corporations,  no  doubt  in 
order  to  preserve  a  free  field  for  "individual 
initiative,"  employed  private  detectives  and 
private  military  forces  to  break  up  the  strikes 
and  destroy  the  effectiveness  of  labor-unions. 
But  in  recent  years  the  public  has  come,  or 
must  one  say  only  that  it  is  coming,  to  take  a 
different  attitude.  From  about  1890  prices 
began  to  rise,  and  they  have  been  continually 
rising  since;  so  that  while  every  one  who  has 
anything  to  sell  gets  more  for  it,  the  cost  of 
everything  he  has  to  buy  is  so  much  greater 
that  his  position  is  likely  to  be  no  better  than 
it  was.  The  farmer  gets  a  price  for  his  wheat 
and  corn  which  he  never  would  have  dreamed 
of  getting  twenty-five  years  ago;  but  the 
price  of  land  and  of  machinery  is  so  high  that 
the  renter  finds  it  difficult  to  make  a  living 

316 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

and  almost  out  of  the  question  to  buy  a  farm. 
Small  business  men  throughout  the  country 
find  themselves  in  much  the  same  position. 
For  the  mass  of  the  people  our  boasted  "pros- 
perity" is  largely  fictitious  prosperity.  Mean- 
while "big  business"  thrives  as  never  before; 
the  number  of  millionaires  increases,  while 
the  chance  of  the  average  man's  ever  becom- 
ing one  declines.  Under  these  conditions  the 
average  man  is  more  and  more  inclined  to 
think  that  free  competition  and  individual 
initiative  are  not  perhaps  among  the  inherent 
rights  of  man;  he  begins  to  think  that  some- 
how those  on  the  "inside,"  by  mysterious 
financial  operations,  by  juggling  the  "mar- 
ket," by  control  of  the  press,  and  by  means  of 
political  connections,  are  able  to  determine 
the  prices  of  essential  commodities.  Under 
these  circumstances  a  spirit  of  social  unrest  is 
arising.  Everything  seems  not  well  in  God's 
country;  and  many  people  besides  the  indus- 
trial laborer  are  seriously  inquiring  whether 
the  beneficent  principle  of  "individual  initia- 
tive" is  not,  after  all,  only  another  name  for 
"maintaining  a  private  paternalistic  regula- 
tion of  other  men's  affairs."  In  the  United 
States  the  trend  of  thought  is  turning  at  last, 
,  as  it  has  long  since  turned  in  Europe,  from  the 
question  of  the  production  of  wealth  to  the 
question  of  its  distribution.  The  problem  of 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

an  equitable  distribution  of  wealth  is  indeed  a 
vital  problem  of  the  age.  How  can  it  be 
solved  satisfactorily  ?  Does  its  solution  imply 
any  radical  modification  of  our  political  ideas, 
any  fundamental  changes  in  the  form  and 
characters  of  our  government  ? 


IV 

In  the  latter  part  of  November,  1918,  a 
successful  lawyer,  standing  in  the  lobby  of  a 
Washington  club,  having  lighted  a  fragrant 
Havana  cigar,  was  heard  to  proclaim  that  it 
was  of  vital  importance  that  the  government 
should  immediately  restore  the  railroads, 
telegraph  lines,  and  express  companies  to 
private  hands,  and  surrender  the  control  over 
industry  and  labor  which  it  had  exercised 
(rightly  no  doubt)  during  the  emergency  of 
the  war.  "I  am  opposed,"  he  said,  "to 
every  interference  with  private  initiative. 
Interference  with  private  initiative  is  a  so- 
cialistic doctrine,  and  it  is  contrary  to  the 
spirit  of  this  government."  This  was  a  way 
the  gentleman  took  of  saying  that  he  was  op- 
posed to  governmental  regulation  of  business, 
and  of  justifying  that  opposition  by  a  fine- 
sounding,  idealistic  phrase.  There  are  plenty 
of  Americans  who  would  applaud  both  the 
sentiment  and  the  phrase,  but  one  wonders 

318 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

whether  such  people  have  ever  seriously 
asked  themselves  what,  after  all,  is  the  "spirit 
of  this  government." 

If  questioned  they  would  probably  say 
that  the  spirit  of  this  government  is  one  that 
makes  for  freedom  and  democracy,  and  that 
freedom  and  democracy  have  been  achieved 
by  giving  the  greatest  amount  of  liberty  to 
the  individual  and  by  the  resolute  refusal  of 
the  government  to  engage  in  any  "socialistic" 
practices.  No  one  would  wish  to  deny  that 
the  "spirit  of  this  government"  is  essentially 
favorable  to  liberty  and  democracy.  What 
Americans  pride  themselves  upon,  and  on  the 
whole  with  good  reason,  is  precisely  that  the 
United  States  has  always  been  a  shining 
example  of  applied  democracy.  But  democ- 
Cacy  means  nothing,  and  has  meant  nothing, 
in  the  United  States  if  it  does  not  mean 
equality — not  indeed  a  mechanical  and  dead- 
ening equality  of  goods  and  of  conditions  and 
of  ideas,  but  a  reasonable  degree  of  equality 
of  opportunity  and  well-being.  The  "spirit 
of  this  government"  must,  it  would  seem,  be 
favorable  to  such  equality,  and  to  such 
measures  as  will  effectively  realize  it. 

Those  who  are  more  concerned  for  the 
rights  of  property  than  for  the  rights  of  men 
are  inclined  to  make  much  of  the  distinction 
between  what  they  call  the  "principle"  of 

319 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

Individualism  and  the  "principle"  of  Col- 
lectivism —  between  a  political  philosophy 
which  denies  and  one  which  commends  gov- 
ernmental restriction  of  individual  liberty. 
This  is  a  lawyer's  doctrinaire  distinction 
which  corresponds  to  no  essential  reality. 
All  government  is  an  interference  with  in- 
dividual liberty;  without  governmental  in- 
tervention private  property  as  we  know  it 
would  cease  to  exist.  Governments  have 
always  assumed  the  right  to  determine  what  a 
man  may  and  what  he  may  not  do  with  his 
property.  In  some  countries  and  in  some 
periods  the  restraints  upon  the  use  of  property 
have  been  less  in  extent,  or  inspired  by  a 
different  purpose,  than  in  others;  but  what- 
ever the  restraints  may  have  been,  they  have 
always  been  ostensibly  justified  on  grounds  of 
expediency.  It  is  beating  the  air  to  discuss 
whether  government  should  regulate  private 
property;  private  property  is  the  very  essence 
of  governmental  regulation — the  most  funda- 
mental and  far-reaching  of  all  the  regulations 
upon  which  modern  society  is  founded.  The 
question  which  a  sensible  man  will  ask  himself 
is,  therefore,  this:  under  the  conditions  of  life 
as  we  find  them  to-day,  what  objects  should 
we  have  in  mind  to  guide  us  in  the  regulation 
of  the  use  of  private  property,  and  what  sort 
of  regulations  will  prove  best  adapted  to 

320 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

attain  that  object?  No  questions  are  an- 
swered and  no  difficulties  solved  by  saying 
that  this  kind  of  regulation  accords  with  the 
"principle  of  Individualism,"  while  that  kind 
of  regulation  accords  with  the  "principle  of 
Socialism." 

Moreover,  the  government  of  the  United 
States  appears  never  to  have  had  much  respect 
for  the  "principle  of  Individualism."  It  has 
never  hesitated  to  restrain  the  "private  ini- 
tiative" of  some  men  along  some  lines,  in 
order  to  aid  the  "private  initiative"  of  other 
men  along  other  lines.  Both  the  federal  and 
the  state  governments  have  constantly  oc- 
cupied themselves,  on  a  grand  scale,  with 
schemes  designed  to  furnish  citizens  with  op- 
portunities which  they  would  never  have  had 
if  they  had  been  left  to  rely  wholly  upon  the 
blessed  principle  of  Individualism.  What  was 
the  public-land  policy  of  the  federal  gov- 
ernment, by  which  millions  of  acres  of  the 
public  domain  (public  land,  be  it  noted)  were 
virtually  given  away  to  the  poor  and  needy— 
what  was  this  but  a  "socialistic"  enterprise? 
Is  it  "private  initiative"  that  has  lowered  the 
percentage  of  illiteracy  and  raised  the  general 
level  of  intelligence  in  the  United  States? 
Or  is  this  result  due  in  great  part  to  govern- 
mental intervention,  in  the  form  of  taxes  laid 
upon  private  property  in  order  that  every  in- 

321 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

dividual,  poor  and  rich  alike,  may  have  a 
common  education  free  of  cost  to  himself? 
Was  the  private  initiative  of  our  great  "cap- 
tains of  industry"  entirely  responsible  for 
their  amazing  success,  or  did  they  owe  some- 
thing to  governmental  aid,  in  the  form  of 
franchises,  protective  tariffs,  and  special  laws 
advantageous  chiefly  to  corporations?  Our 
"infant  industries,"  whose  gigantic  stature 
now  amazes  the  world,  still  clamor,  do  they 
not,  for  governmental  intervention.  It  seems, 
in  fact,  that  the  only  people  who  just  now 
seriously  oppose  governmental  intervention 
are  the  brewers.  According  to  the  philosophy 
of  big  business  in  general,  one  is  forced  to  the 
conclusion  that  "private  initiative"  is  ade- 
quate only  for  the  laborer  and  the  consumer, 
some  degree  of  governmental  intervention  be- 
ing still  necessary  for  the  capitalist  and  the 
manufacturer. 

The  truth  is  indeed  that  the  best  traditions 
of  the  United  States,  the  real  "spirit  of  this 
government,"  are  wholly  in  favor  of  whatever 
governmental  activity  may  be  necessary  to 
assure  that  fundamental  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity which  is  indispensable  to  true  liberty 
and  the  very  essence  of  democracy.  Without 
such  equality  of  opportunity,  "individual 
initiative"  is  no  more  than  a  sanctimonious 
phrase  that  tastes  sweet  in  the  mouths  of  the 

322 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

fortunate.  And  if  it  was  proper  to  equalize 
opportunity  and  well-being  by  furnishing  the 
people  with  free  land  and  free  schools,  it  is 
proper  to  equalize  opportunity  and  well-being 
by  assuring  an  equitable  distribution  among 
the  people  of  that  wealth  which  is  the  product 
of  their  labor  and  of  the  resources  of  the 
country  which  belongs  to  them. 

If  this  can  be  satisfactorily  done  by  "gov- 
ernmental intervention,"  the  propriety  of 
attempting  it  is  scarcely  to  be  questioned. 
But  it  is  well  to  remember  that  govern- 
mental intervention  may  be  quite  legitimate 
without  being  quite  adequate;  and  recent 
events  have  made  it  abundantly  clear  that  the 
problem  which  confronts  us  is  not  one  involv- 
ing industrial  liberty  only,  but  political  liberty 
as  well.  If,  therefore,  industrial  liberty  is  to 
be  achieved  through  the  action  of  a  beneficent 
government,  we  need  to  be  quite  sure  that  the 
government  is  beneficent;  if  the  state  is  to 
give  us  equality,  we  need  to  know  whether  it 
is  likely,  in  the  process,  to  deprive  us  of  liberty. 
The  modern  problem,  which  seems  so  largely 
economic,  does  in  fact  raise  the  political  ques- 
tion in  its  most  fundamental  form.  For 
many  years  it  has  been  obvious  that  the 
eighteenth-century  philosophy  has  been  a 
complete  failure  on  its  economic  side,  and 
hitherto  we  have  more  or  less  confidently 

323 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

sought  a  new  solution  of  industrial  democracy 
within  the  framework  of  the  old  revolutionary 
political  mechanism.  To-day  this  confidence 
is  much  diminished;  and  it  seems  question- 
able indeed  whether  democracy  in  any  form, 
industrial  or  political,  does  not  involve  a  rad- 
ical modification  of  the  modern  state  rather 
than  an  extension  of  its  already  overgrown 
powers. 

The  modern  state  'still  rests,  ostensibly, 
upon  the  revolutionary  doctrine  of  natural 
rights  and  the  popular  will,  and  still  func- 
tions, ostensibly,  through  the  revolutionary 
representative  mechanism.  That  the  govern- 
ment should  be  responsive  to  the  popular  will 
is  indeed  still  loudly  proclaimed ;  but  it  is  sig- 
nificant that  those  aspects  of  the  revolutionary 
political  philosophy  which  are  most  in  evi- 
dence, which  are  indeed  in  the  way  of  be- 
coming sacrosanct,  are  precisely  those  devices 
for  determining  and  expressing  the  will  of  the 
people  which  no  longer  do  adequately  deter- 
mine or  express  the  will  of  the  people.  These 
devices  are  the  suffrage  and  the  election,  by 
majority  vote,  of  representatives  apportioned 
on  the  basis  of  population  within  definite  and 
more  or  less  arbitrary  territorial  areas.  The 
will  of  the  people  is  thus  identified  with  the 
will  of  the  majority,  irrespective  of  the  ques- 
tions to  be  decided  by  the  majority  or  of  the 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

composition  of  the  groups  which  make  the 
majority  and  the  minority  in  any  given  case. 
Generally  speaking,  majority  rule  is  a 
practicable  device  for  determining  the  will  of 
the  people  only  under  two  essential  conditions. 
The  first  of  these  conditions  is  that  the  matter 
about  which  the  decision  is  to  be  binding  on 
all  should  be  one  which  it  is  generally  agreed 
should  be  decided  in  one  way  for  all.  Few 
people  believe  in  majority  rule  in  respect  to 
religious  practices,  and  no  one  believes  in 
majority  rule  in  respect  to  the  color  of  neck- 
ties. Other  things  equal,  majority  rule  works 
well  in  respect  to  any  line  of  conduct  in  pro- 
portion as  the  people  concerned  are  agreed 
that  it  is  a  matter  calling  for  a  common  de- 
cision. The  second  condition,  closely  con- 
nected with  the  first,  is  that  the  group  or  com- 
munity within  which  the  rule  of  the  majority 
is  to  be  applied  should  possess  a  high  degree 
of  solidarity.  In  a  group  in  which  all  have 
much  the  same  possessions,  standards  of  life, 
and  moral  prepossessions,  majority  rule  works 
well  enough  precisely  because  the  ideas  and 
interests  of  the  minority  are  not  so  radically 
different  from  those  of  the  majority  that  they 
cannot  readily  submit  to  the  decision  of  the 
majority.  The  will  of  the  people  is  suffi- 
ciently expressed  by  the  will  of  the  majority 
only  when  the  minority  "wills"  to  let  it  go 

325 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

at  that.  But  when  the  minority  is  a  more  or 
less  fixed  group,  whose  ideas  and  interests  are 
radically  different  from  those  of  the  majority, 
or  are  thought  to  be  so,  then  majority  rule 
ceases  to  be  "government  by  the  people"  and 
becomes  the  oppression  of  one  group  by 
another. 

Now  the  industrial  revolution  has  brought 
about  a  situation  in  these  respects  to  which 
the  old  mechanism  of  representation  is. be- 
coming unsuited.  The  old  mechanism  of  rep- 
resentation was  based  upon  the  assumption 
precisely  that,  given  free  thought,  free  schools, 
and  free  contract,  inequalities  within  the  elec- 
torate would  tend  to  disappear;  it  was  sup- 
posed that  the  "people"  would  more  and 
more  be  shaped,  by  the  operation  of  these 
"liberties,"  to  a  common  type  in  respect  to 
material  conditions,  spiritual  aspirations,  and 
civic  ideals.  It  need  scarcely  be  pointed  out 
that  this  has  not  proved  to  be  the  case.  In 
place  of  nations  of  individuals,  all  more  or 
less  alike  in  respect  to  conditions  and  ideas, 
the  industrial  revolution  has  given  us  nations 
differentiated  into  classes  and  corporate  and 
occupational  groups,  more  or  less  different 
and  often  sharply  antagonistic ;  and  the  lines 
of  division  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with 
the  territorial  areas  upon  which  political  rep- 
resentation is  based. 

326 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

Inevitably,  therefore,  when  a  given  eco- 
nomic group  finds  its  interests  inadequately 
represented  within  the  political  framework  it 
endeavors  to  get  its  interests  "represented" 
outside  of  it — it  forms  an  organization  based 
upon  its  economic  interests  and  uses  its 
economic  power,  if  it  has  any,  to  exert  extra- 
political  pressure.  The  most  striking  ex- 
amples of  this  phenomenon  are  of  course  the 
activities  for  many  years  past  of  the  capital- 
ist and  labor  groups.  In  1917,  when  the 
labor-unions  threatened  to  tie  up  all  the  rail- 
roads of  the  country,  many  people  said  that 
it  was  an  "outrage"  that  the  representatives 
of  the  unions  should  be  allowed  to  "dictate" 
to  the  government  of  the  United  States. 
These  people  conveniently  forgot  that  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century  the  capitalist  and  manu- 
facturing groups  had  been  sending  their 
"representatives"  to  Washington,  where  they 
also  "dictated,"  more  urbanely  no  doubt,  to 
the  government  of  the  United  States.  That 
either  group,  laborers  or  capitalists,  should 
"dictate"  the  policy  of  the  government  is  an 
"outrage,"  if  you  like,  although  no  more  so  in 
the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  But  it  is 
useless  to  cry  "outrage."  What  has  to  be 
faced  is  a  situation  in  which  the  government 
finds  it  necessary  to  submit  to  dictation  by 
special  groups;  and  this  situation  arises,  in 

22  327 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

part  at  least,  from  the  fact  that  our  political 
machinery  is  no  longer  well  adapted  to  our 
economic  organization.  The  government, 
nominally  composed  of  persons  chosen  to 
represent  the  will  of  the  people  in  certain 
territorial  areas,  finds  that  the  crucial  prob- 
lems of  the  time  cannot  be  solved  without 
taking  into  account  the  will  of  the  people 
grouped  in  certain  economic  categories.  This 
is  doubtless  the  real  source  of  the  diminished 
state  of  Congressmen  and  Senators.  What 
they  too  often  legally  represent  is  a  group  of 
people  without  any  definite  common  will  to 
be  expressed;  what  they  have  to  deal  with 
are  groups  of  people  who  can  get  their  will 
expressed  only  by  using  their  extra-legal 
economic  power  as  a  means  of  dictation. 

Such  dictation  is  not  new;  what  is  new  is 
that  the  labor  groups  have  recently  acquired 
sufficient  economic  power  to  compete  with  the 
capitalist  groups  for  the  control  of  the  govern- 
ment. If  labor  dictation  seems  more  revolu- 
tionary than  capitalist  dictation,  the  reason 
is  that  whereas  labor  is  dissatisfied  with  the 
present  political  and  economic  regime,  capital 
has  been  and  is  desirous  of  maintaining  the 
present  political  and  economic  regime.  It 
is  manifestly  to  the  interest  of  the  capitalist 
groups,  in  whose  hands  the  industrial  revo- 
lution has  placed  such  tremendous  power,  to 

328 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

maintain  the  capitalist  regime  at  home,  and 
to  promote,  through  imperialist  methods,  their 
interests  abroad.  Professing  unlimited  faith 
in  democracy  and  the  rule  of  the  majority, 
they  are,  therefore,  above  all  others  interested 
in  maintaining  unimpaired  the  fiction  of  na- 
tional solidarity,  and  above  all  others  inter- 
ested in  magnifying  the  state  and  in  divest- 
ing it  of  responsibility  both  at  home  and 
abroad.  In  view  of  the  persistent  rivalry  of 
nations  with  one  another  in  a  world  of  inter- 
national anarchy,  the  prevailing  nationalist 
psychology  makes  it  relatively  easy  to  iden- 
tify the  will  of  the  dominant  group  with  the 
will  of  the  "people,"  and  the  interest  of  the 
dominant  group  with  the  "  honor "  or  the 
"vital  interest"  of  the  nation.  Confronted 
always  with  the  menace  of  war  and  conquest, 
the  disposition  is  always  strong,  and  in  times 
of  crisis  becomes  irresistible,  to  place  the 
"honor"  and  the  "vital  interest"  of  the  na- 
tion unreservedly  in  the  hands  of  the  govern- 
ment and  to  assume  that  the  government 
speaks  for  an  undifferentiated  nation.  In  the 
last  analysis  truth  and  virtue  become  indis- 
tinguishable from  "loyalty" — loyalty  to  the 
government  and  submission  to  the  state. 

Thus  on  the  basis  of  popular  sovereignty 
and  national  independence,  in  origin  a  pro- 
test against  the  divine  right  of  kings,  there 

329 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

has  been  erected  in  our  day  the  doctrine  of  the 
divine  right  of  the  state  and  the  absolutism  of 
the  majority.  To-day  this  absolutism  is  at 
the  disposal  of  the  capitalist  class ;  to-morrow 
it  may  be  at  the  disposal  of  the  proletariat. 
The  danger  is  much  the  same  in  either  case. 
What  the  dominant  class,  whether  labor  or 
capital,  really  fears  is  not  a  government  which 
either  obtains  or  destroys  liberty;  what  it 
fears  is  an  all-powerful  government  which  it 
does  not  control;  what  it  desires  is  an  all- 
powerful  government  which  can  be  used 
primarily  in  the  service  of  its  own  interests. 
A  genuine  friend  of  mankind,  one  who  esti- 
mates civilization  in  terms  of  the  spiritual  as 
well  as  the  material  life,  has  little  to  hope  for 
from  the  conception  of  an  absolute  state  for 
which  obedience  is  the  only  virtue  and  force 
the  only  test  of  right.  Such  a  state,  failing 
to  effect  a  genuine  reconciliation  of  contending 
interests  and  aspirations,  seems  destined  to  be 
a  mere  instrument  in  the  hands  of  self-seeking 
groups  engaged  in  a  desolating  class  conflict. 

"The  autocracy  of  individuals,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Pollard,  "is  something  of  a  myth,  and 
the  real  enemy  of  civilization,  as  it  is  the  real 
parent  of  militarism,  is  the  autocracy  of  the 
state,  which  is  not  confined  to  the  Central 
Empires  and  their  allies.  This  is  also  the 
truth  about  irresponsibility.  The  irrespon- 

330 


AN  EXPERIMENT; IN  DEMOCRACY 

sibility  of  monarchs  to  their  peoples  is  a  matter 
of  detail  compared  with  the  irresponsibility  of 
the  state.  //  the  state  can  do  what  it  likes, 
frame  its  own  code  of  international  conduct,  and 
dictate  its  own  conception  of  truth  and  morals, 
it  is  immaterial  to  those  who  suffer  whether  that 
dictation  comes  from  a  despot  or  a  democracy!' 
These  are  words  which  may  well  give  us  pause. 
It  is  indeed  questionable  whether  "industrial 
liberty/'  or  liberty  in  any  sense,  can  be 
achieved  through  the  activities  of  a  state 
which,  on  the  assumption  that  it  speaks  for  a 
majority,  can  frame  its  own  code  of  interna- 
tional conduct  and  dictate  its  own  conception 
of  truth  and  morals.  Democracy  under  these 
conditions  is  scarcely  the  kind  of  democracy 
the  world  needs  to  be  made  safe  for. 

Prediction  is  hazardous ;  but  it  would  seem 
that  the  Great  War  has  carried  most  European 
countries  beyond  the  reasonable  hope  of 
solving  the  industrial  problem  by  a  mere 
extension  of  governmental  intervention  and 
the  elaboration  of  bureaucratic  supervision. 
To-day,  at  all  events,  the  insurgent  cry  for 
the  right  of  "life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness"  calls  for  something  more  than  a 
little  humanitarian  mitigation  of  the  present 
order.  The  trend  of  thought  and  action  in 
Europe  reveals  little  disposition  to  magnify 
the  state  or  to  increase  the  powers  of  govern- 


THE  UNITED  STATES 

ment.  The  significance  of  the  present  move- 
ment in  the  labor  world,  such  as  the  activities 
of  the  "triple  alliance"  in  England  or  of  the 
railroad  brotherhoods  in  the  United  States, 
the  significance  of  the  soviet  idea  in  all  its 
varied  forms,  is  that  these  are  attempts  to  get 
the  "will"  of  real  economic  groups  "repre- 
sented" in  government;  and  in  so  far  they 
imply  a  modification  of  the  system  of  repre- 
sentation on  the  basis  of  territorial  areas. 
But  such  schemes  imply  far  more  than  a  mere 
modification  of  the  system  of  political  repre- 
sentation; they  imply  a  more  democratic  con- 
trol of  industrial  enterprise  by  the  people  di- 
rectly concerned  in  such  enterprise,  and  that 
implies  in  turn  a  restriction  of  direct  control, 
not  only  by  the  capitalist  class,  but  by  the  gov- 
ernment itself.  These  tentative  efforts  may 
indeed  prove  futile;  but  in  so  far  as  they  point 
the  way  to  the  future  they  indicate  the  gradual 
dissolution  of  capitalistic  autocracy  in  industry 
and  the  decentralization  of  its  political  coun- 
terpart, the  consolidated  nationalist  state. 

The  concentration  of  economic  power  in  the 
hands  of  a  class,  the  more  or  less  effective  con- 
trol of  the  state  by  this  class,  the  rationaliza- 
tion of  the  state  so  controlled  on  some  founda- 
tion of  divine  right  or  of  papal  or  popular 
infallibility — these  are  indeed  old  enemies  of 
human  welfare.  They  have  appeared  in  every 

332 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  DEMOCRACY 

stage  of  history,  and  the  latter-day  result  of 
the  political  and  industrial  revolutions  of  the 
last  two  centuries  have  been  chiefly  to  present 
them  in  new  forms.  That  these  old  enemies 
have  taken  on  the  protective  coloring  of  de- 
mocracy makes  them  no  less  real,  but  only 
more  insidious.  To  mistake  the  form  for  the 
substance  of  democracy,  to  assume  with  com- 
placence that  institutions  under  which  liberties 
were  once  won  will  always  guarantee  them— 
this  will  be,  for  any  people  in  the  twentieth 
century,  to  court  disaster.  It  is  perhaps  the 
peculiar  danger  of  the  United  States.  The 
time  for  national  complacency  is  past.  The 
sentimentalism  which  turns  away  from  facts 
to  feed  on  platitudes,  the  provincialism  which 
fears  ideas  and  plays  at  politics  in  the  spirit 
of  the  gambler  or  the  amateur,  will  no  longer 
serve.  The  time  has  come  when  the  people 
of  the  United  States  must  bring  all  their  intel- 
ligence and  all  their  idealism  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  subtler  realities  of  human  relations, 
as  they  have  formerly  to  the  much  simpler 
realities  of  material  existence:  this  at  least 
they  must  do  if  America  is  to  be  in  the  future 
what  it  has  been  in  the  past — a  fruitful  ex- 
periment in  democracy. 

THE    END 


INIA 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

63    *       This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


NIA 


LD  21A-50m-ll,'62 
(D3279slO)476B 


General  Library 
University  of  California 


YB  08191 


OF   CALIFORNIA          LIBRARY   OP  THE   UNIVERSITY   OF 


OF   CALIFORNIA          LIBRARY   OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA         LIBR 


CALIFORNIA 


LIBRARY    OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


LIBR 


ill 


